WAVESHAPER
Fair · Action · 2017
The verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $1.51. Buy it if you want it.
- Reviews
- 88% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 512 MB of memory, DirectX 9 -compatible graphics card with 32MB of video memory, 154 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, Linux.
WAVESHAPER is a minimalist score attack game in which you attempt to stop the 2D vector menace, one obstacle at a time.
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.
- How long it takes to beat isn't in our data. We scored it as a typical Action game (about 6 hours) and docked the score for the missing length.
The value story
June 2017 is where it bottomed out, at $0.49. Its cuts run 50 percent off as a rule. There have been 72 in the 9 years tracked, about 6 weeks apart. Today's $1.51 at 20 percent off still sits 208 percent above the floor, so a deeper cut exists in its history.
On value it sits in the top 4 percent of its genre. It is cheaper than 90 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 93 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Bit Blaster XL ($0.99, scores 97) beats it on value, while it beats BIT.TRIP Presents... Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien ($14.99, scores 54).
This site sampled 557 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 11 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written January 2021 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 3,221 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 625 have a larger share. Inside the two-hour refund window, 87 percent of the 685 reviews written there were positive, against 88 percent overall, and those are 31 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
69% start to 13% 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
14 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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WAVESHAPER scores 65/100 on the BANG Score (fair value). Length is estimated at 6 hours, not measured, so the score is docked. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/562260/waveshaperThe 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.