Take On Mars
Skip · Strategy · 2017
The verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $9.99.
- Reviews
- 55% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, 6 GB of storage. Windows only.
Take On Mars places you right in the middle of mankind’s most exciting undertaking. Start out in the seat of a rover operator, finish as the first human to have ever set foot on the Red Planet.
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.
- How long it takes to beat isn't in our data. We scored it as a typical Strategy game (about 8 hours) and docked the score for the missing length.
The value story
June 2023 is where it bottomed out, at $1.99. 89 discounts in the 13 years on record. They run about 80 percent off, roughly 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 4 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
It is pricier than 70 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 97 percent. The games it most resembles do better on the same math. Kerbal Space Program 2 ($49.99, scores 2) and Occupy Mars: The Game ($29.99, scores 19) both outscore it.
Of the 334 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 3 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 30 percent of the 275 reviews written there were positive, against 55 percent overall, and those are 16 percent of everything written about it.
Players
7 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
Take On Mars scores 0/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). Length is estimated at 8 hours, not measured, so the score is docked. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/244030/take-on-marsThe 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.