This looks sweet. Vibes of Startropics and something else I can't quite put my finger on.

Edit: I didn't even need 15 minutes with the demo. Outstanding stuff again from Yacht Club. Day 1 purchase for me.

"Modern retro" games are such a vibe. All the charm of retro games but without the clunk. I played Skald: Against the Black Priory earlier this year and loved it and this looks amazing too.

I think you're seeing classic Gameboy Zelda. Awakening and the Oracle games.

I'm tired of the pixel art aesthetic.

You can pick any artistic style you want. There literally aren't any real hardware imitations to graphics anymore. And yet it's always realistic graphics for AAA games, and pixel graphics for indie games (with a few rare ones in between that do it different).

Sigh...

Then it's not for you. I find pixelart very charming, it's not just about hardware limitations.

I know it's not. It's about a sizable portion of indie developers and gamers being stuck in past nostalgia.

That is EXACTLY what I saw

There are a lot of types of games that are inherently not broken in their designs, and there are advantages to portraying the aesthetic in the same style, like quickly conveying to your audience where your inspirations came from so that they know what type of game it is. In a similar way, lots of games have moved on to a PS1 aesthetic these days.

You're... Not exactly disproving what I said or making a real case why it's beneficial. On the contrary, you've only reinforced exactly what I'm talking about:

For quite a period, and still today, the indie scene is dominated by pixel art, because those people grew up with games that looked that way, and are still stuck there. But now the people who grew up with the PS1 are also capable of completing game projects, and they themselves are stuck in their past.

or making a real case why it’s beneficial

To which I said:

quickly conveying to your audience where your inspirations came from so that they know what type of game it is

In a lot of ways, "they don't make 'em like they used to", so in addition to that art style helping to convey what kind of game they made, it also comes along with cost reductions for their art pipeline in a lot of cases. It doesn't really make them "stuck in the past" when there were real advantages to how things used to get done.

Ocarina of Ages but demade for the NES

Oh and if you haven't already, go play Master Key by Achromi on whatever platform suits you best.

"UGH why do people write haikus when you could use the whole page, it's not 1913 any more"

Yeah, me too. I grew up with heavily pixelated 70s & 80s graphics and I have zero desire to return to that now that technology has improved so much that it's not necessary.

Shame, because it means there are some games that I just won't enjoy, but so it goes, there's lots more stuff to play.

Joke's on you; I believe poetry is just pretentious writing.