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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[–] kartoffelsaft@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

I don't think this can really be answered until after the fact. Anything that I (and I suspect most) people could say about an artstyle are going to be particular to an instance of that artsyle. If I'd give advice as someone who is neither an artist nor a game designer, what attracts me more than anything is a unique artstyle, which, if I'm gonna give a brutal opinion, starting from a vague category like 'pixel', 'hand drawn' or '3D' probably won't get you there.

I feel like I even struggle to answer your question at face value because it doesn't align well at all with how I conceptualize game art. For example, Cruelty Squad is a game that I don't think I'd have gotten if not for it's artsyle. Like, sure, it's 3D, but it's a lot more like a PilotRedSun animation than it is a game like TF2. Or take a game like Factorio: most of the assets of that game are pre-rendered 3D sprites, so despite being artisticly unique in a way that interests me it doesn't fit into the categories you've asked about. The best I can say is "I dunno", and I don't think anyone else can answer it further than that.