Thumper
Fair · Action · 2016
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
WAIT.
A BANGER at $6.13, only fair at $19.99.
- Length
- 7.8h
- Value
- $2.56/hr
- Reviews
- 92% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, nVidia GTX 480 / AMD Radeon 7870, 1.4 GB of storage. Windows only.
Thumper is rhythm violence: classic rhythm-action, blistering speed, and brutal physicality. You are a space beetle. Brave the hellish void and confront a maniacal giant head from the 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
December 2020 is where it bottomed out, at $3.99. It has been discounted 77 times in the 10 years tracked here, typically at 70 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was this month, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks. Past sales have already crossed the $6.13 BANGER line 41 times.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 4 percent on value. It is pricier than 94 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 97 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Super Hexagon ($2.99, scores 97) beats it on value, while it beats BIT.TRIP RUNNER ($9.99, scores 50).
This site sampled 462 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 1 was written by a buyer who refunded it, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 82 percent of the 1,101 reviews written there were positive, against 92 percent overall, and those are 27 percent of everything written about it.
Finishing takes 7.8 hours; clearing it takes 18, which is 2.3 times the campaign.
At 7.8 hours it is a handheld-sized game, and Valve rates it Deck Verified.
The drop-off
79% start to 2% 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
Players
7 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
this is so my ♥♥♥♥, PERFECT PSYCHEDELIC RHYTHM GAME probably my favorite thing on steam right now
Thumper is sublime. It stands as one of the greatest video games of all time and is a work of art. Please play this game. The flow state is utterly amazing and the ambient opening just hit like the first plunge of heroin.
Criminally underrated game. When you lock in and get past midway through the game, you feel like you are marching down a battlefield, banging your chest. Best "rhythm" game ever made. But, feels more than that. Huge bonus points for the VR. Doesn't really change the game (and honestly, that is a good thing) but just makes it more immersive. Basically like strapping your monitor to your face but playing this in VR...
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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Thumper scores 65/100 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/356400/thumperThe 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 23, 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.