What makes this game worth $40 more than any other roguelike?

[Tarkh]

Sorry, couldn't take my hands off necroposting...
I never ever understood such kind of people that come and start to ask: "Why should I buy this, why should I like that?"... Buddy, you owe nothing to no one. You are FREE. Absolutely cosmically FREE. And the one and only question of human existence is what do you do with your freedom?
Money is worthless. Love is priceless. There are things (not necessarily games) made with love, and there are things that aren't.
Playing Approacing Infinity I can feel the love that was put into it. And it's not about only love. I feel skill, I feel fantasy, I feel style. I do believe in a world that game creates. It's a quite a rare thing now in gaming, especially for person of my age. When you grow older, you insensibly lose the ability of a child - to believe and to wonder. It's an inevitable process. There are fewer and fewer miracles in modern adult person's life. But I'm ready to pay twice or thrice more than forty crumpled green paper pieces for a little miracle.

[PvK]

Here's why I just bought Approaching Infinity for $40:

It looks like something I will enjoy a lot. People write about the good times they have had playing it, and I'm confident I will have similar good times. In particular, it's a type of game I want to play. I like managing a ship and its crew, trying to keep it and them alive, gathering stuff, and having different adventures in an ongoing context. I like permadeath designs over savescum designs. It looks very fun and creative and like a nice independent effort. I want to support that, too, by paying for it.

Yes it costs more than many other games I could get, and other free Roguelikes, but that's not going to keep me from playing this game. This game actually has almost zero competition on features that I want. There are a few somewhat similar games, but nothing quite like it, so I have to either buy it or abstain. I choose to buy and play it. It's not about "oh this is priced higher than other games, so I will buy other games instead."

If I _do_ choose to think about price comparison, I think about today's $46 lunch-with-woman, which was nice, and also not an either-or comparison, but it puts it in perspective. If I can spend $46 on a 45-minute lunch, I can spend $40 on a game that I'll may end up spending 45 hours or more enjoying. Not that price determines what I do like that, but even if it did, it would be very cheap entertainment by that measure.

On the other hand, I also agree with someone on another thread who wrote that Shrapnel might sell many more than 4x the copies, if they charged $10 per download, because so many people do have these kind of hangups about buying games, and people who aren't sure this game is what they want, would try it.