Would have bought if it was cheaper

[Naktya]

The title says it all. Usually, I consider a game worth it if you get 1 hour of play time for each dollar. With the actual price, I need to get a least 30 hours of game play for the game to be worth it. Instead, you get only 3 hours (mentioned in all the reviews). This game has some similarities with Strange Horticulture, which has almost 10 hours of play time and costs 10$ when in sale. Botany is just not worth it at this time, which is unfortunate since It seems to be a good game.
Whoever decided the price of this game should reconsider it. A lot of possible players, included myself, will be deterred by this price tag. I wish the best for every one who worked on this game.

[Psyringe]

I don't think this "1$ per hour" rule makes much sense. It seems pretty crude to me, and it assumes that the quality of a game does not matter as long as it kills time. For me, the 4-5 hours of quality gameplay (with imaginative puzzles, beautiful plants and environments, relaxing atmosphere, and a captivating story) that I had with Botany Manor, are definitely worth more than 25 hours of a game that requires me to grind through some boring content again and again.

Sure, when I was a kid, I had very little money, but lots of time. Back then, how many hours I could "get out" of a game was a relevant factor, because each purchase was a major expense, and the game had to last for as long as I needed to save money for the next one. But those times are decades in the past. Nowadays, money is not a problem, but my spare time is limited. So to get the most out of my games, I want to have a quality experience - and if a game provides that (which Botany Manor did), I don't mind paying good money for it. Who cares if they are short? For people with less time, it can actually be a benefit if a game can be fully experienced in a day or two, rather than having to spread it out over several sessions that may be weeks apart. And if I want more, I can always buy another game - there's hardly a shortage of new games.

If you skip good games just because they aren't killing enough time for your taste, you're missing out on a lot of great experiences.

That said, I do believe that the game would have sold better on Steam with a lower price point. I think the game is good enough that it could have had a snowball effect - starting with good initial sales, then the Steam algorithm would have recommended it more, then it would have sold more, and so on. The $25 price tag is too high to create the initial sales spike that would have been necessary for that strategy, though. That strategy works best with prices in the "impulse buy" range, and for most people, $25 does not fall in there.

However, I also think that the devs are getting most of their money from GamePass anyway. Given that GamePass probably gave them the security of a safe income, setting a high MSRP does make sense. It effectively treats the income from Steam as a bonus, and it leaves room for discounts down the line. With a list price of (say) $12, the chance for the aforementioned feedback loop would have been higher - but if that feedback loop did not come to pass, this "bonus income" would have been considerably lower.

I can't peek into the developers' heads, obviously, but I can see good reasons for setting the game's price the way it has been. Whether a quality experience is worth the money for you, is for you to decide. Of course, you can also just wishlist the game and wait for a sale.

[ricky1981]

Can't agree with you, I'll take a short perfectly-formed experience over a lot of bloat. You could buy twenty loaves of bread for the price of a nice meal out, but which one will you remember?

If they drop the price by half then there's no guarantee of twice the buyers, and this will be in a sale in the future (like pretty much every other game) so it's better to get a higher price now from those willing to pay it imo.

[Karrolanth]

It is pricey for the amount of time you get out of it (and no real replay value either), but then again going to the cinema is pricey these days and you only get a couple of hours for that! ;) That said, I'd have been a bit disappointed if I paid full price without realising it was so short.

I enjoyed the game, but played it on GamePass. (I would have had to wait for a substantial sale to get it on Steam!) It was a nice-looking, relaxing game with only a couple of minor irritations like backtracking to reread some clues.

[hibikir]

What makes this one Pricey is not the number of puzzles: It's that they are so basic. There aren't sensible theories that will lead a player to the wrong solution. Jumps in logic to make one feel smart: Too much of the game is ultimately just locating the interactive icons (which we get hints of in the notepad, thankfully), and either write them down in a real notebook, or keep going back and forth to make sure we remember how one picture looked, so that we could see which number to read from a lookup table.

See The Witness: we might get an easy puzzle or two, but then there's complications that challenge what do to next. Why is this tree missing a branch I need? Why is this display malfunctioning? Here there are none of those connections: Data table A is connected to data table B, so one hit tells you which row of A to read, which then takes you to the right row of B, which then solves the puzzle.

So it's not a matter of just the total number of hours: but how few minutes involve thinking and trying things, as opposed to just checking the map to see where X room was, as that's where the data table we need is.