SpaceMadness: For modern indies, the pixel art is more economic choice than an appeal to nostalgia. Going for big, detailed sprites will take up a lot of time. Those classics from the 90s had to work within the confines of the technology, but they also had teams of artists who work in specialized areas. Indies usually have hobbyists and have fewer people to work with to boot.
Yeah, the most frustrating thing to me is some people seemingly don't want devs to make anything unless said devs have enough of a budget to make mainstream-quality art. I imagine if simple
vector graphics were as common as pixel art, people would be complaining about that
also. (I recall complaints about some games' art here looking like "mobile game" art even though it wasn't pixel and probably decent overall.)
Toby Fox games, "Faith" series dev, Puppet Combo, etc. - arguably poor art but they found success
SpaceMadness: For modern indies, the pixel art is more economic choice than an appeal to nostalgia. Going for big, detailed sprites will take up a lot of time. Those classics from the 90s had to work within the confines of the technology, but they also had teams of artists who work in specialized areas. Indies usually have hobbyists and have fewer people to work with to boot.
Honestly, this doesn't particularly stand out, but I've seen worse.
arrua: I don´t buy it. There are low budget indie games that don´t rely on big ugly pixels. Cthulhu Saves Christmas might be a good example of a game that looks good despite pixels being noticeable. Symphonia is a good example of a low budget game which looks really nice. And then, we have games like Dagon.
Symphonia looks great but is it really "low-budget"? Is that info public?
Maybe "Undertale" would be a good comparison - made by one guy. Or "Night in the Woods" looks like it has fairly simple art style but with vector graphics instead of pixels (may not be "low-budget" either though).
edit: it looks like the "What Lies in the Multiverse" devs have a publisher, so depending on the financial backing maybe we should expect more from them. When it comes to indie devs' art I usually come to their defense because I know making good art is time-consuming and challenging.