Foundation
Fair · Strategy · 2025
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $34.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 19h
- Value
- $1.84/hr
- Reviews
- 87% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 8 GB of memory, GTX 960 / R9 290 - 3 GB Video Memory. Windows only.
Foundation is a grid-less, laidback medieval city-building game with a focus on organic development, monument construction and resource management.
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
August 2020 is where it bottomed out, at $22.49. 64 discounts in the 8 years on record. They run about 25 percent off, roughly 6 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 6 weeks.
Value puts it in the top 8 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 98 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 91 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Banished ($19.99, scores 83) beats it on value, while it beats Farm Manager 2018 ($19.99, scores 33).
14 of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written May 2025 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 46 percent of the 969 reviews written there were positive, against 87 percent overall, and those are 4 percent of everything written about it. It sells extras on top of the sticker price (unlock); the score docks it lightly for that.
Finishing takes 19 hours; clearing it takes 58, which is 3.1 times the campaign.
The drop-off
77% 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
844 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
Foundation is a genuinely excellent medieval city-building game, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who enjoys creating settlements that develop organically rather than placing everything on a rigid grid. One of the game's greatest strengths is the freedom it gives you. Roads form naturally as villagers travel between their homes and workplaces, neighbourhoods gradually take shape, and no two settlements...
Love this game. As far as city builders go, this is one of the best in my opinion. The vibe is cozy, and relaxing. Create and design your city as you want. Balance your cities resources and income as you expand into new territory. With more content on the way, I cant wait to see how this game grows.
15 out of 10! The Ultimate Antidote to City-Building Grid Spam. In a genre often dominated by rigid grid systems and hyper-optimized block layouts, Foundation stands out as a breath of fresh, medieval air. It is a city builder that trades strict geometric confinement for beautiful, organic growth. After spending over 250 hours in game, the core loop remains so much fun. The only desire is to immediately start yet...
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.
Cite this score
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Foundation scores 58/100 on the BANG Score (fair value). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/690830/foundationThe 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.