Universe Sandbox
Worth it · Strategy · 2015 · Early Access
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $29.99, a BANGER if it drops to $17.57.
- Length
- 2.6h
- Value
- $11.53/hr
- Reviews
- 96% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, 4 GB Video Memory†, Shader Model 6.0, 4 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
Create & destroy on an unimaginable scale with a realistic physics-based space simulator. Explore the beauty of our universe and the fragility of our planet. Use science to bend the laws of gravity, collide planets, boil away oceans, fire epic space lasers, and customize your universe.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
August 2017 is where it bottomed out, at $14.99. Its cuts run 33 percent off as a rule. There have been 73 in the 11 years tracked, about 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 5 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks. The math puts its BANGER price at $17.57. The record reaches that level 14 times.
On value it sits in the top 2 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 97 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 99 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Kerbal Space Program ($9.99, scores 95) beats it on value, while it beats SpaceEngine ($29.99, scores 57).
Of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 50 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written January 2022 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 86 percent of the 3,017 reviews written there were positive, against 96 percent overall, and those are 11 percent of everything written about it.
Finishing takes 2.6 hours; clearing it takes 135, which is 52 times the campaign.
Players
357 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
it was laggy at first but after setting a lot of setting to low it ran so well i think this is my new space game :)
it is worth the $30 because you can do many things (destroy the solar system) + (make stuff habitable) etc...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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Universe Sandbox scores 75/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/230290/universe-sandboxThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 2, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.