Yeah, I think it's way too expensive if you're not using USD. It's +70% more than the price of the current Factorio steam price in my local currency. And with 40$ for the steam release, it has to be higher than Factorio post-conversion (current Factorio USD price is 35$).
It's a hard sell for me, considering Factorio has a ton of actively developed mods (cough Space Exploration 0.7 cough), a demo, and in early access era it's cheaper and insanely polished.
From a quick glance, I'm not sure whether it's a fun game or not, as realism tends to be not fun. Requiring an internet connection for map tiles also sounds not good for offline play.
Well, I'll wait for reviews when it's out before deciding then.
At $30, I've got a lot of expectations. At $40, I've got a lot more. Neither of those price points are the impulse buy for "it might be a nice game that I could waste a few hours on." It's competing with things like Satisfactory and Factorio for promise of enduring in my library gaming.
This feels something closer to Puffin Planes ($12), Rail Route ($25), Station Flow ($18).
The difference between $25 and $30 isn't too much, but there's another significant hurdle to get up to a perceived $40 value.
It does look interesting, but for a purchase at that price point, I'm going to need to feel that its worth more than a weekend or two of gaming and something that will be a game that I want to pick up again after a month or two away from it.
This gets into the economics of whether it's more worthwhile to sell to a large, casual audience for say $10 or a small enthusiast audience at $30-40. At the enthusiast price I expect a polished game at launch and loads of reasonably priced expansions in the not too distant future.
