Bit Blaster XL
BANGER · Shooter · 2016
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
A BANGER at $0.99.
- Length
- 2.6h
- Value
- $0.38/hr
- Reviews
- 96% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, 512MB +, 502 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Bit Blaster XL is a fast-paced, retro arcade shoot 'em up (shmup) inspired by the classic quarter-munchers of the ‘80s. Easy to pick up, hard to put down, boost, dodge, shoot, and chase high scores in this addictive, old-school action game!
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 $0.48. That was February 2023. It has been discounted 117 times in the 11 years tracked here, typically at 51 percent off, with about 5 weeks between sales. 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 1 percent on value. It is cheaper than 96 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 98 percent. Among the games closest to it, Distant Space ($0.99, scores 58) and Distant Space 2 ($0.99, scores 58) both come in lower.
$8.20 is where it would stop being a BANGER. Today it is $0.99.
None of the 363 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written April 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 96 percent of the 2,940 reviews written there were positive, against 96 percent overall, and those are 54 percent of everything written about it.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating and runs 2.6 hours, about as long as a handheld game wants to be.
The drop-off
62% start to 5% 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
3 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
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Bit Blaster XL scores 97/100 on the BANG Score (a BANGER). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/433950/bit-blaster-xlThe 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 17, 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.