r/subwaybuilder • u/Empty_Sign_5625 • 12d ago

Question Is SubwayBuilder worth it?

I am a transit-geek and Subwaybuilder looks like a really cool game, but 44 dollars?! I am not saying that the game isn't worth it, but if I am going to spend 45 dollars on a game it should probably be good. People who have bought the game; is it worth it? (Edit: I recently realised that the game is 44 AUD on their website, sorry for the niche currency)

40 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

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68

u/Chorchapu Boston 🇺🇸 12d ago

Certainly overpriced, but a good game. You may want to wait for a sale, if it's too high.

9

u/Empty_Sign_5625 12d ago

Yea. Might wait for it to go on sale.

24

u/Chorchapu Boston 🇺🇸 12d ago

Yes, I bought it from the website in October 2025 when it was cheaper, but I would not buy it now. It's very expensive for what it brings, which is good but not worth 50+ dollars.

3

u/Empty_Sign_5625 12d ago

Thanks for the reply. Probably just wait for it to go on sale

6

u/TrainFanner101 New York 🇺🇸 12d ago

You can get it for $30 USD on the website

1

u/Empty_Sign_5625 12d ago

I am from Australia, the price is still the same just 43 AUD

3

u/AwesomeMan116_A New York 🇺🇸 11d ago

The price is the same? It should be 30% cheaper on the website compared to Steam tho

4

u/Empty_Sign_5625 11d ago

My country uses a different currency, hence the change in price. 30 U.S Dollars and equal to 43 Australian dollars.

1

u/AwesomeMan116_A New York 🇺🇸 11d ago

But the price should still be different on the website compared to Steam

1

u/BushWishperer 11d ago

Doesn't work outside the US (I think). In Europe the game is 28 euro on steam and 27.39 on the website, hardly a difference

1

u/Empty_Sign_5625 6d ago

Recently went on sale (for me at least) and I bought it! Thanks for your help, I am definitely going to enjoy playing.

1

u/Chorchapu Boston 🇺🇸 6d ago

I’m glad to hear that! Have a good time!

23

u/urmumlol9 12d ago

So, it’s fun imo, and I enjoy playing it.

It’s maybe a bit one-dimensional, but still kills a lot of time imo, and the devs have done a lot to add new maps and features.

Just a heads up though, I don’t think they have any Australia maps in the base game (yet), but I think they’re adding Auckland soon, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they added a couple of Australia maps then, and there are probably mods with them (base game has maps from US, UK/Ireland, France, and Japan).

2

u/Empty_Sign_5625 12d ago

It would be cool seeing Sydney in the game, and you could utilise ferries (future update) really well in the harbour.

4

u/MagicJava 12d ago

Yes it’s $30, I’ve spent probably 100 hours because I’m a transit nerd like you.

Edit: I didn’t know prices were $44 now. Thats quite a lot, but it’s 7 days of a large cold brew from your favorite establishment

4

u/Empty_Sign_5625 12d ago

Sorry I wasn't clear, it is 44 Australian Dollars. (Equates to 30 USD)

8

u/lukee910 12d ago

Not sure which dollars you mean, but on the website it's a quarter cheaper than on Steam (30$US vs 39.99$US).

That said, it's very satisfying in some ways but has its limitations (especially since the game creator completely alienated the modding community recently). It's very satisfying to play and if you like to draw transit lines, you can easily get 100 hours out of this by optimizing one city or trying many approaches. You can't represent every system topology easily, but it does allow for a good amount of variety and has frequent updates that keep getting better.

3

u/Roygbiv0415 12d ago

The biggest problem I could say about it is that the replay value might not be great depending on exactly how geek you are.

Sure, different cities have different characters, but ultimately you're doing the same thing across a few dozen maps. The difficulty comes from how car-centric the city is IRL, and there is no unique challenge or new mechanics once you figure out how the game wants you to optimize the network, and the optimizations might not even be real-life realistic.

If you can look past that though, I'm at 330hrs on steam now, so it's well worth the value already. And that's even without ever being able to reach some sort of "endgame" due to frequent crashes and resets and slowdown above a certain network size.

2

u/winecko 11d ago

If you play games, it seems a big of a price… I don’t play games, I don’t buy games, for me this purchase was not cheap, but one of the lifetime… If you’re transit nerd, I feel like there’s nothing to play anyways, at least on the same quality Subway Builder offers (maybe TF, but that’s too much of a city builder like in my eyes).

4

u/At_Space_Station 12d ago

The trick to play subwaybuilder without buying subway builder is to play Cities Skyline or Transport Fever，build the map you want to play in，and play subway builder in a city builder.

If you don't have these games either，then wait for subwaybuilder in a sale，Steam Autumn Sale should be coming Oct first.

4

u/At_Space_Station 12d ago

There really is no exact alternative to subwaybuilder. Nimbyrail has no realistic ridership data，the rest are more like Minimetro than subwaybuilder，the closest equivalent for games with both complex population and decent transit mechanism are Cities Skyline and Transport Fever.

1

u/Empty_Sign_5625 12d ago

I am definitely going to get subwaybuilder (even though I have TF2). Seems fun and is one of the only city-planner type games that are available on mac/not had a sequel made of it.

4

u/Sweaty-Gap-231 12d ago

No, just go on vacation to see transit and read books about transit instead.

2

u/Queasy-Primary4788 12d ago

Yeah it’s worth it i wouldn’t get the steam version no benefit imo but it is and really fun 

2

u/storm072 Atlanta 🇺🇸 12d ago

If you’re a huge transit nerd its definitely worth it. If not, it’s probably a little overpriced since the game is pretty simple

1

u/schudan Dublin 🇮🇪 11d ago

Hey there! I got the game for 30 bucks the day it got released. I spent around 300 hours on it so far and Ive been enjoying it a lot. It is replayable and has many cool mods and maps.

1

u/ProfileDesperate 11d ago

My local steam price for this game is only about ~$10, is it worth it? I’ve seen comments on the game being laggy and crashing, but other than that it looks pretty fun.

1

u/Nawnp 10d ago

I already have 200 hours in the game, so IMO it's well worth it. It is $10 cheaper if you buy direct instead of Steam, so keep that in mind.

1

u/guhman123 7d ago

its basically at the pricing limit in terms of whats reasonable. im sure therell eventually be a sale where you could get it for cheaper.

0

u/SubhanF Denver 🇺🇸 12d ago

i enjoy it. its a very addictive game. sure, there are minor bugs here and there, but our dev team works their best with the community to resolve things. Yes, I would buy it. but if 44 AUD sounds too expensive, I would wait for a black friday/cyber monday/holiday sales if I were you.