Spacebase DF-9
Skip · Strategy · 2014
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $9.99.
- Length
- 6.7h
- Value
- $1.49/hr
- Reviews
- 18% positive
Watch this gameOne email when it is worth buying. Your call on what that means.
Get one email when Spacebase DF-9 is worth buying.
One email per game. Unsubscribe in a click.
Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, Intel HD Graphics 3000 with 384 MB of RAM, 205 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
In Spacebase DF-9, you'll build a home among the stars for a motley population of humans and aliens as they go about their daily lives. Mine asteroids, discover derelicts, and deal with the tribulations of galactic resettlement in Earth's distant future.
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 $0.99. That was November 2015. It has been discounted 71 times in the 13 years tracked here, typically at 75 percent off, with about 7 weeks between sales. 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.
It is pricier than 69 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 99 percent. The games it most resembles do better on the same math. Planetbase ($14.99, scores 49) and RimWorld ($34.99, scores 97) both outscore it.
49 on Metacritic, 18 percent from players. A gap this way round is usually launch damage or a slow decline.
None of the 334 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 11 percent of the 482 reviews written there were positive, against 18 percent overall, and those are 14 percent of everything written about it.
Players
2 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
Still dissapointed that this game was never given the chance to reach the planned potential. As amazing as some of Double Fine's games are, this is an example of what happens when management has to pull the plug on a concept they don't feel they can bring to its realization. This was Double Fine's attempt at a management sim. Similar to the Two Point games combined Rimworld or Prison Architect, with space...
If you're here on a historical tour of this ♥♥♥ of mismanagement, I would highly recommend the game "Space Haven", which is feature-complete, well-executed, and supported by developers who care more about their customers than their own ego. It's what this game could've been. I think my experience with this game was like many. Encouraged by some excellent Early Access titles at the time, when Spacebase DF-9 hit early...
i randomly remembered i paid money for this ♥♥♥♥ and i got pissed of and had to look it up and leave a note
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: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
Spacebase DF-9 scores 0/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/246090/spacebase-df-9The 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 Sep 20, 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.