Dawn of Man
Worth it · Strategy · 2019
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $24.99.
- Length
- 18.1h
- Value
- $1.38/hr
- Reviews
- 87% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, 1 GB VRAM (Shader Model 3), 2 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
Command a settlement of ancient humans, guide them through the ages in their struggle for survival. Hunt, gather, craft tools, fight, research new techs and face the challenges the environment will throw at you.
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 $8.74. That was November 2025. It has been discounted 76 times in the 8 years tracked here, typically at 50 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.
On value it sits in the top 2 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 95 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 91 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Empires of the Undergrowth ($29.99, scores 76) beats it on value, while it beats Planetbase ($14.99, scores 49).
This site sampled 683 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 6 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written September 2022 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 50 percent of the 552 reviews written there were positive, against 87 percent overall, and those are 3 percent of everything written about it.
The main story runs 18.1 hours. Doing everything runs 98, 5.4 times as long.
The drop-off
100% 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
323 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
Genuinely fun survival/city builder type game. You start as a small band of nomads, and have to work your way up to the steel age. It's a fun game to play and get lost in for an afternoon, and different challenges provide different levels of difficulty so I haven't gotten bored. I've had to play each scenario a few times to get a good handle on things, but I actually like that about it. Would definitely recommend it...
I have played this game since it was in early access and it's come a long way. I have loved every minute played. The biggest downfall is that it's been abandoned by the devs. They've been working on other games and this one is begging for more. Would love if they continued improving this game instead.
The concept of "work areas," is a very good one. It allows for fine tuning and relieves the player of having to micromanage every inhabitant of the community. An enjoyable sim, with game difficulty settings that allow hardcore masochists to have almost every degree of self flagellation, while the less enthusiastic crowd is provided with a more "cozy," and laid back approach. :)
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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Dawn of Man scores 75/100 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/858810/dawn-of-manThe 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 14, 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.