You can not like the art style of Stardew Valley, but calling it ugly in the way DF, TOME, DCSS or other games that have very rudimentary graphics styles are I think is missing the point in this context. A lot of effort and production time was put into Stardew Valley’s graphics, it is undeniably not “ugly” the way other games that developers focused all their time on gameplay instead of graphics are.

I dunno compared to other games of a similar or younger vintage like UT2004, that I had a ton of fun with at the time but looking back they have aged like milk in terms of aesthetics and core gameplay… I think the quake games actually have aged very well.

I don’t find Slay The Spire that ugly artwise, I don’t find it beautiful… but what I do find ugly is how terribly Slay The Spire uses screen space. It has an AWFUL UI in terms of using space intelligently for important bits of gameplay information and I would love to play it on mobile (I play other deckbuilders on mobile a lot) but I will never touch it on mobile for that reason.

I play with tilesets only, but oh my I love this game. ESPECIALLY with the sky islands mod, that completely elevates the game for me.