Road Not Taken
Skip · Roguelike · 2014
The verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $14.99.
- Length
- 7h
- Value
- $2.14/hr
- Reviews
- 80% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory. Runs on Windows, macOS.
Road Not Taken is a roguelike puzzle game about surviving life’s surprises. You play as a ranger adventuring through a vast, unforgiving forest in the aftermath of a brutal winter storm, rescuing children who have lost their way.
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 $1.49. That was October 2020. It has been discounted 44 times in the 12 years tracked here, typically at 70 percent off, with about 11 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 11 weeks.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 48 percent on value. It is pricier than 72 percent of its genre. The games it most resembles do better on the same math. Blue Prince ($29.99, scores 67) and Into the Breach ($14.99, scores 86) both outscore it.
HowLongToBeat players log 7 hours as a typical playtime, and completionists log 25, 3.5 times as much.
The drop-off
75% 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
Cite this score
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Road Not Taken scores 49/100 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/293740/road-not-takenThe 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.