Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
Worth it · Strategy · 2017
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $19.99.
- Length
- 27.9h
- Value
- $0.72/hr
- Reviews
- 91% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, NVidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB, 20 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
Build and expand your repair service empire in this incredibly detailed and highly realistic simulation game, where attention to car detail is astonishing. Find classic, unique cars in the new Barn Find module and Junkyard module. You can even add your self-made car in the Car Editor.
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
The lowest price on record is $1.79, set in August 2026. Its cuts run 67 percent off as a rule. There have been 101 in the 9 years tracked, about 4 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 6 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 4 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 1 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 91 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 96 percent. Among the games that feel like it, My Summer Car ($14.99, scores 94) beats it on value, while it beats Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 ($19.99, scores 77).
Of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 33 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written June 2023 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 54 percent of the 3,120 reviews written there were positive, against 91 percent overall, and those are 6 percent of everything written about it.
The main story runs 27.9 hours. Doing everything runs 86, 3.1 times as long.
The drop-off
52% start to <1% 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
202 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
Very fun and useful for learning the basics of working on cars. Not even close to 100% accurate but more than good enough for someone who doesn't know much to begin with. It is basically a great start for learning. Also, the gameplay loop is pretty good. It's not just a good learning tool. It's an actually good game. I grabbed it for 1 euro during the most recent sale and I have to say, at that price especially, it...
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 is a great game for anyone who loves cars and relaxed yet engaging gameplay. At first, it might seem like simply repairing cars could be boring, but the game quickly draws you in. It's satisfying to take a car apart piece by piece, find the problems, buy parts, fix them, and gradually turn an old clunker into a real beauty.
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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Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 scores 84/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/645630/car-mechanic-simulator-2018The 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 12, 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.