Balrum
Fair · RPG · 2016
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $14.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 30h 77.8h to 100%
- Value
- $0.50/hr
- Reviews
- 79% of 808 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales. Last cut ended 11 days ago.
- Next sale
- Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
About the game
Balrum is an old-school, turn-based, open world RPG with deep tactical combat. Explore a huge living fantasy world with dozens of side quests next to an epic main quest. Grow your own crops, build your home, and craft your own custom items.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 1 GB of memory, ATI Radeon X1650 / NVIDIA GeForce 8200 / Intel GMA 950, or equivalent, 1 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
The value story
69 discounts in the 11 years on record, a median of 75 percent off across all of them, roughly 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 11 days ago.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 15 percent on value. It is pricier than 78 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 70 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Craft The World ($18.99, scores 77) beats it on value, while it beats Force of Nature ($7.99, scores 44).
More about Balrum
Steam's global achievement data puts about 2 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. On a 30-hour game, the hours short of it still count in its price per hour. Of the 372 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 7 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to August 2026. That is more refunded reviewers than 8 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 2,866 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 272 have a larger share. Inside the two-hour refund window, 55 percent of the 112 reviews written there were positive, against 79 percent overall, and those are 15 percent of everything written about it.
30 hours to finish it, 78 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 2.6 times the campaign.
The drop-off
34% start to 2% finishSteam counts fewer than one in ten of its players at the ending achievement. Steam global achievements
What players say
Cozy and lovely classic CRPG, it's easy to lose yourself in farming, logging, fighting, anything. It's a clear homage to the Book of Eschelon series, and improves upon them in many ways. Exploring is really easy because you can just right click a tile to auto-path a la RuneScape, or you can use WASD. The game is a pseudo turn based when you're exploring, and becomes turn based once in combat. And no annoying party...
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
Balrum is a very difficult game. I have to restart it more than three times because I selected wrong character abilities. Finally, I got all of achievements after 295+ hours playing. Pros: +Very huge maps. The Balrum map also connects to other big areas. +Many exploration points and quests. There are tons of enemies and dungeons. +Build your own house and depot in the safe place. +Farming, crafting and hunting...
Why do the devs hate mages? Nearly every mob in the game has something to deal with mages. Silence/drain mana/Resist fire. (fireball being the primary DPs for a mage) Every piece of equipment including rings/amulets has armor on it and that lowers spell accuracy and spell crit. Every CC even when/if it lands has mobs sprinting up to the mage anyway. You would think FEAR would have them running away from the caster...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
Balrum scores 54/100 on the BANG Score (fair value) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/424250/balrumReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 28, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.