As long as the shallow base game still has more gameplay hours than most games I don't think people mind additional (also needing to be worthwhile) content costing money. That's Paradox's general business model and I think it works great for the types of games. I think I have nearly all of the optional content for Cities Skylines now but dollars per hour I'm still doing better than when it launched and when it launched the dollars per hour was still significantly lower than traditional games.
Looking at Metropolis 1998 my feedback would be I'm excited for the concept of a modern take on retro builders but I'm worried the gameplay will end up more "2D grid traffic simulator" than city builder. "Traffic simulator" can be a key layer for city builder die-hards but I'm hesitant that a 2D grid approach would be more interesting than base CS1, particularly with a free mod that simulates traffic more realistically (albeit not as performant what you can do with the traffic and road designs in 3D freeform is also much more interesting). I'll keep an eye on it though, it may be something I pick up in the future as it materializes :).
Thanks! I agree with your feedback. I intend to have different options to mitigate the traffic if people don't want to manage it. My biggest inspiration for the game is actually roller coaster tycoon. I want to offer to the player the option to sit back and enjoy what they built (from scratch if they want!), and then switch back to managing and building their city, much like a theme park.
i like that idea. i would enjoy watching what i built. taking this as a springboard for a feature discussion: many sim games suffer from needing to build american style car centric cities. how is your approach here? could we build historical european cities? futuristic car-free ones? public transport like trams? separate bike paths?
I'd love to fulfill all of those options, and I plan to, but I dont think I will have them all available in the first release build. I'm the only developer working on the game, and the only other person I work with is the pixel artist.
So expect cars and sidewalks. Pedestrian-only walk ways should be possible in the first release.
Also if you're willing to wait about 6 months for any DLC, you can pick it up for a couple dollars. I don't think I've paid more than $5 for any of Cities Skyline's major DLC.
Looking at Metropolis 1998 my feedback would be I'm excited for the concept of a modern take on retro builders but I'm worried the gameplay will end up more "2D grid traffic simulator" than city builder. "Traffic simulator" can be a key layer for city builder die-hards but I'm hesitant that a 2D grid approach would be more interesting than base CS1, particularly with a free mod that simulates traffic more realistically (albeit not as performant what you can do with the traffic and road designs in 3D freeform is also much more interesting). I'll keep an eye on it though, it may be something I pick up in the future as it materializes :).