Say you had three indie games which were otherwise identical in terms of gameplay but one was pixel art, one was hand drawn and one was 3D. Which would you be most inclined to buy? Also, suppose the price started going up for each. Would you feel like any of them would start to feel like a better or worse value at certain price points?

Let's assume that the art styles are competently done for each and for the sake of simplicity, generally appealing to you. Any other thoughts you might have about this would be interesting to hear too.

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[–] simple@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'd go with hand-drawn in general. They're the hardest to make but usually end up being the most beautiful. Games like Gris, Cuphead, Hollow Knight, etc.

But I think more than which general artstyle is how well implemented it is and the general aesthetic they're going for. Like, when you say pixel art, it depends if it's something that looks like NES games and super high level pixel art like Hyper Light Drifter and Owlboy. If it looked like those, I'd take pixelart any day. On the other hand if it's really pretty 3D like Hi-fi Rush and Guilty Gear Strive, I'd go for that.

So in the end it depends on what's the most visually appealing. It doesn't really matter which style the dev chooses as long as it looks good and works well with the game.