Planetbase
Skip · Strategy · 2015
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $14.99.
- Length
- 8.8h
- Value
- $1.70/hr
- Reviews
- 80% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, 512 MB VRAM (Shader Model 3), 645 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
Guide a group of space settlers trying to establish a base on a remote planet. Grow food, collect energy, mine resources, survive disasters and build a self-sufficient colony in a harsh and unforgiving environment.
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
June 2025 is where it bottomed out, at $3.74. Its cuts run 40 percent off as a rule. There have been 105 in the 11 years tracked, about 5 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 4 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 5 weeks.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 17 percent on value. It is pricier than 83 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 77 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Space Haven ($24.99, scores 71) beats it on value, while it beats The Crust ($20.79, scores 34).
Of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 2 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written July 2021 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 39 percent of the 353 reviews written there were positive, against 80 percent overall, and those are 4 percent of everything written about it.
Finishing takes 8.8 hours; clearing it takes 33, which is 3.8 times the campaign.
The drop-off
98% 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
193 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
my favorite time killer. overall great game, but I'd like to make some suggestions especially since I just noticed planet2's incomming first is lack of personal information for more detailed management on many things: specific building statues(how many people using it, need more of what, and too much of what), why ppl are unhappy overall, like, more humanized requests such as i want more variety of meal, want better...
Great game, pretty simple to grasp but hard to master, plenty of content to play for a good 50 hours and come back to it once in a while
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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Planetbase 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/403190/planetbaseThe 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 13, 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.