It also means more people can play on more hardware, it typically focuses the experience, it makes the interactive elements more visually distinguishable from the background graphics, it’s cheaper/faster to produce so less incentive to bloat with MTX to recoup massive investments, the scope is smaller so can be better aligned with a singular cohesive artistic vision, and the limited graphics encourages stylisation and artistic decisions when ‘photo real’ becomes not an option to target.

Also you don’t need to wait 10+ years for a game, just to receive a bloated mess where you only engage with 20% of the content yet had to wait for 100% of the development time, since at that point the investment demands it has to appeal to every possible consumer, only to still get a buggy unfinished release due to the massive scope. /rant. Anyway, indies are great and i love short games too.

I have a few in my library:

• Signalis (low-poly (not that you can notice), low-res, CRT effect)
• CrossCode (2D, low-res)
• Valheim (low-poly, low-res, still graphically intensive due to lighting)
• Lethal Company (low-res, bitcoin miner levels of GPU load)
• Super Alloy Ranger (2D, low-res)
• Terraria (you know Terraria, don’t lie)
• Iconoclasts (2D, low-res)
• Starbound (Terraria, but a bit worse and in space)

I don’t think these games aim for nostalgia, nostalgia alone is not a good reason to choose low-poly or low-res graphics.

Low-res textures and sprites have the advantage of being much easier for artists not only to hand draw, but to explicitly choose what details to give to a certain surface.
3D games with low-res rendering also have their own appeal, like you say: they tell you what you’re looking at but still leaves your imagination the burden of filling in the details.

To me low-poly models don’t really have their own appeal, unlike pixelated visuals, however I also don’t mind them at all.
I still occasionally play games like Perfect Dark and TLoZ: OoT on their recompiled PC ports, they look good despite their low-poly nature because they don’t need high-poly models and their animations would look uncanny if they did (goofy ahh textures though).

However, there are some retro effects that I find to be straight up ugly: Signalis applies a CRT effect occasionally, which I can’t say I’m fond of.

A recent Digital Foundry video about the new perfect dark trailer showed a snippet of some game called “Agent 64”. I wishlisted it immediately.

I enjoy games that go for retro graphics, because with today’s technology they can do so much more with less.

As far as suggestions: any boomer shooter (Selaco, Supplice, Incision), others people have already mentioned in this thread like Signalis and Dread Delusion, and more like Tenebris Somnia which mixes 8-bit pixel graphics with live-action cutscenes.

I’ve found myself lately a lot more interested in games that don’t focus heavily on graphics but instead allow other parts of the game to speak for itself. This allows for the imagination to fill in the gaps, as you mentioned.

I’ve been playing a lot or Caves of Qud recently. It’s a rogue-like game with tile graphics and colourful text. Somehow this menu simulator game has drawn me into it’s harsh and unforgiving world. The tile based graphics actually allows for an amazing amount of creative freedom both from the developer and player point of views. The developer has created this futuristic planet with mutants and cybernetics roaming the planet trying to survive. The player has the freedom to play as they like and create the most unique characters they can imagine. My current character has two hearts, a scorpion tail, a fanged beak, two dagger wielding claws and a habit for stabbing.

I think the rise of constantly better technology has inadvertently encouraged a focus on better graphics over other aspects of video games. While there are some absolutely beautiful games with higher hardware demand, I think as of late, I’m yearning for games that focus more on story or gameplay. Games where you can feel the developer’s passion. Games with polish and attention to details in the most unexpected ways. Games that attempt to push boundaries within certain limitations (think hardware or graphic styles for example).

I think what I want is a game that feels like I’m reading a fiction book in a way. What I mean is that when you read a work of fiction, your imagination is filling in all that visual information. A game can provide you more than just text, but if it can balance graphics, gameplay and story, it can really transport and immerse your imagination into that world.

Signalis. you can get the game from humble store and steam.

I did see a few low-poly, very PS1 or N64-looking indies recently, even going as far as mimicking the weird texture wobbling from the PS1.

But Penny’s big breakaway is not really low-poly, or something that looks like 5th gen/PS1. Not graphically anyway.

Though it’s mechanically rather retro, with the focus on move combos, scoring and speedrunning. It’s almost more of a linear kind of skate or jet set radio-like game than a platformer.

I need to mention the Enigma Trilogy here. It uses the retro graphics so well to its advantage to create a strong horror atmosphere that I don’t think could have been done anywhere near as well with high fidelity graphics.

And it has a very small audience and definitely deserves a lot more so go check these games out! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/41914/THE_ENIGMA_TRILOGY/

There’s a game with pre-rendered backgrounds called Alisa. I always really enjoyed the pre-render look. The excitement of reaching a “cinematic FMV” that moves the story in a PS1 game is very different from standard cutscenes.

I think games with sprites are great, but I can’t say the same for low poly 3d games. Not every 3d game needs to have super high fidelity with millions of polygons making up each character’s face, but I think games using n64/ps1-style models is a bit too far in the opposite direction.

I’m playing through Turbo Overkill right now which has the high-poly model and smooth animations but gritty low-res texture thing going on, and I like it. I’d take stylized textures that are visually interesting over boring photorealistic textures in most cases.

Nightdive’s System Shock remake is probably my favorite example of that same aesthetic.

Noita, a precedurally-generated fully destructible, with physics, pixel-graphics action rogue-like game where you play as a mage going through the various layers of a dungeon with the use of your spells that one can spell mix and match with a wand system that can provide the player with interesting and wacky spell combinations.

Out of the new stuff, Dread Delusion comes to mind. Kinda comparable to Morrowind, it’s a quirky first-person RPG. And in terms of graphics, it even has an option to enable-disable wiggly pixels at the edges of textures!

Pseudoregalia is a PS1-eta low-poly aesthetic 3D metroidvania with really, really slick movement mechanics. It’s the kind of game that really could’ve existed back then, had developers just known all the little quality of life design choices we have these days.

Personally, I consider “retro graphics” to specifically mean the graphics evoke the look of an old game system, as opposed to just having “lo-fi” art. So I’d say that Celeste has great pixel art, but it’s not retro graphics, since it doesn’t remind me of any old console’s look. In addition to the games others have mentioned, I’ll point out these ones.

• Nintendo 64 — Corn Kidz 64
• Game Boy Color — Mina the Hollower
• Game Boy Advance — Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo
• Commodore 64 — VVVVVV
• Mid-late 90s PC — Hypnospace Outlaw

Indie games using retro graphics is nothing new. The ratio of effort vs looks is pretty good. The solo dev of Cave Story (released 2004) said that was why he went for that aesthetic.