Ancient Space
Skip · Strategy · 2014
The verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $19.99.
- Length
- 22.7h
- Value
- $0.88/hr
- Reviews
- 44% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, Nvidia Geforce GTX 460 or AMD equivalent, 20 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
Ancient Space is a story driven single player real time strategy game where you take command of a fleet embarking on a scientific mission to chart undiscovered reaches of space called ‘The Black Zone’. Overcome overwhelming odds and fight for your life and the survival of your ship and its crew.
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 $3.99. That was December 2015. Its cuts run 75 percent off as a rule. There have been 95 in the 12 years tracked, about 5 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 6 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 5 weeks.
It is pricier than 92 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 99 percent. The games it most resembles do better on the same math. Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander ($19.99, scores 86) and Distant Worlds: Universe ($29.99, scores 26) both outscore it.
The drop-off
46% start to <1% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
What players say
I don't know when i bought the game but i wanted to give it another try today and I think it is barely playable. Selecting units is pure horror or maybe I am missing something. It seems the game does not want me to split fleets and don't let me do selective attack orders. The list of ships in a sector (upper left corner) is useless except when double clicking. Not switching camera to the selected ships makes single...
Gameplay was more tedious than fun. You can tell the developer put a lot into this game, but unfortunately, the gameplay is just not fun for me. What makes it tedious? Getting your ships to go places. Yup. Moving your ships gets tedious.
Felt so bland from the start, I never bothered starting it up again after it crashed. Which it would shortly after every time I decided to give it a go. Also, Paradox Interactive...
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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Ancient Space 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/249190/ancient-spaceThe 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.