To Be Clear, this is not about the actual cost of the game development or the game costs.

This is about the money system within the game itself. I wanted to make the game fun, and to do that, I have focused on the sandbox aspect of the game. So money is a problem. You cannot have an infinite sandbox when you have to buy the sand.

So every tile will cost from a single resource, called V.T. (vampire's tears). The cost will be insignificant in the long run. Every item returned to the core will be sold and give an amount of V.T. The main goal of the each level will be to produce an amount of V.T. per second. This is to encourage people to aim for efficiency.

Another mechanic is the price of each item. The price of each item will change depending on the level. This is to encourage people to not create the same thing every time.

Anyway, a demo is out now. You can try it out here: https://fetss.itch.io/cosmicconveyor.