Star Ruler
Fair · Strategy · 2010
The verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $7.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 14.5h
- Value
- $0.55/hr
- Reviews
- 83% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 256 MB of memory, 1024x768 minimum resolution, 256 MB memory, 297 MB of storage. Windows only.
Take command of a vast interstellar empire and safeguard your species from total extinction in a procedurally generated 3D galaxy (with the option to flatten it) from 1 System to 10,000+! Prove your species' ingenuity through a deep and intricate combat system where anything (from individual components on ships to the stars themselves)...
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
November 2015 is where it bottomed out, at $2.24. 25 discounts in the 14 years on record. They run about 75 percent off, roughly 13 weeks apart.
On value it sits in the top 7 percent of its genre. It is better reviewed than 80 percent of its genre. Among the games that feel like it, AI War: Fleet Command ($9.99, scores 62) beats it on value, while it beats Distant Worlds: Universe ($29.99, scores 26).
Finishing takes 14.5 hours; clearing it takes 50, which is 3.4 times the campaign.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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Star Ruler scores 60/100 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/70900/star-rulerThe 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.