Dust: An Elysian Tail
Worth it · RPG · 2013
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $14.99, a BANGER if it drops to $12.69.
- Length
- 10.1h
- Value
- $1.48/hr
- Reviews
- 95% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 1 GB of memory, DirectX 10 compatible video card with shader model 3.0 support, 1.5 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Immerse yourself in a gorgeous hand-painted world on a search for your true identity. As the mysterious warrior, Dust, your action-packed journey will take you from peaceful glades to snowy mountaintops and beyond.
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
It has never been cheaper than $2.99. That was August 2014. Its cuts run 75 percent off as a rule. There have been 78 in the 13 years tracked, about 7 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 13 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 7 weeks. Past sales have already crossed the $12.69 BANGER line 78 times.
Value puts it in the top 1 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 78 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 99 percent. Among the games that feel like it, UnEpic ($12.99, scores 85) beats it on value, while it beats Death's Gambit: Afterlife ($9.99, scores 60).
Steam's global achievement data says about 7 percent of players ever finish it. On a 10.1-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see. This site sampled 571 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 2 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written April 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 80 percent of the 1,215 reviews written there were positive, against 95 percent overall, and those are 9 percent of everything written about it.
Valve rates it Steam Deck Verified, and at 10.1 hours it is short enough to finish on one.
The drop-off
86% start to 7% finishMost players never reach the end. On a 10.1-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
8 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
An absolute classic from the Xbox 360 which still holds up across its art style, music, exploration, and level design. The combat, while controlling well and looking flashy, does give you limited options as you progress through the game with low enemy variety and most ability upgrades pertaining to exploration. Nonetheless, it is still fun to fly across the screen, hitting combos, and parrying blows from stronger...
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).
Cite this score
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Dust: An Elysian Tail scores 82/100 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/236090/dust-an-elysian-tailThe 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.