Cogs
Fair · Short indie · 2009
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $5.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 5.2h
- Value
- $1.15/hr
- Reviews
- 88% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 512 MB of memory, 123 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Cogs is a puzzle game where players build machines from sliding tiles. Players can choose from 50 levels and 3 gameplay modes. New puzzles are unlocked by building contraptions quickly and efficiently. Inventor Mode: Starting with simple puzzles, players are introduced to the widgets that are used to build machines gears, pipes,...
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 $2.49. That was January 2013. Its cuts run 50 percent off as a rule. There have been 14 in the 14 years tracked, about 16 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 16 weeks.
Value puts it in the top 3 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 71 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 92 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Toki Tori ($4.99, scores 69) beats it on value, while it beats Puzzle Together Multiplayer Jigsaw Puzzles (free, scores 61).
73 from critics against 88 percent from players, and the player number comes from people who own the game.
Inside the two-hour refund window, 80 percent of the 104 reviews written there were positive, against 88 percent overall, and those are 34 percent of everything written about it.
5.2 hours to finish it, 15 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 2.8 times the campaign.
The drop-off
50% start to 3% 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
A fantastic classic of the form, updated by the dev to work without issue on modern systems in a modern engine. Strongly recommended.
I played Cogs probably around when it came out, when I was about 6. My dad showed me this game and I thought it was the coolest thing. Many years later, I rediscovered it for sale on Steam and had to play it again. Though simple and somewhat short, the mechanics are unique and make you think outside the box; the later levels become especially difficult. The challenge modes are also fun to test your brain. All these...
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.
Cite this score
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Cogs scores 67/100 on the BANG Score (fair value). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/26500/cogsThe 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 4, 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.