You Have to Win the Game
Worth it · Action · 2014
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
PLAY IT.
Worth it at free.
- Length
- 1.6h
- Price
- Free to play
- Reviews
- 93% positive
Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
You Have to Win the Game is a free exploration platformer with a retro 1980s PC aesthetic.
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
Against its own genre it lands in the top 1 percent on value. It is better reviewed than 98 percent of its genre. Among the games that feel like it, VVVVVV ($4.99, scores 96) beats it on value, while it beats La-Mulana ($14.99, scores 58).
Steam's global achievement data says about 11 percent of players ever finish it. On a 1.6-hour game, that is a lot of evenings most people never spend.
The main story runs 1.6 hours. Doing everything runs 5, 2.9 times as long.
Valve rates it Steam Deck Verified, and at 1.6 hours it is short enough to finish on one.
It is still busy. 4 players were in it at once at the last check, across 81 days of tracking.
The drop-off
94% start to 11% finishA normal fall-off for a game this long. Steam global achievements
Players
4 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: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
You Have to Win the Game 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/286100/you-have-to-win-the-gameThe 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.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.