I want fidelity, crisp frames, with a cool art style, not some jank and blurry attempt at "realism". Ban TAA, ban ML upscaling, ban frame generation. Ban AAA.

(All the best games are indie games)

If we consider a game as a cake, I think of the graphics as its frostings. Sure, it could make the game look very good, but won't do shit if the base of the cake is crap.

I can't handle getting addicted to Nethack again at this point in time

It’s creative bankruptcy. Things don’t need to be realistic, it’s called style.

Stuff like Zeno Clash and Dishonored hold up aesthetically because they aren’t going for realism. And I’d take Morrowind’s arthropod bodies back if I could have the moral complexity and ya know, themes back.

Does ASCII art count? Dwarf Fortress, MUDs, etc. are great fun.

Just don't understand people looking at screenshots and gameplay videos and commenting on how the shadows on some background detail look slightly better with the FSSMGXTR scaling setting turned to BBXT5 instead of HAMndX3.

Text rendered onto a screen is also graphics.

That's 3 hairs on the arm you see. Give me my $90

I saw a text based porn game yesterday. Was pretty fun but not much porn.

It was never about fun. It's about experiencing the game.

When I read a book, the goal is to have whatever experience the book is going to give me, and leave my own life behind for a while.

Getting lost in a AAA fantasy world with super-high-fidelity graphics is an amazing experience.

I want a fun game that can run on my shitty PC

I'll just leave this link to Mindustry here, I guess...?

Are dcss tiles banned? I don’t want to play it ascii

Unpopular opinion but graphics do matter a little bit or at least more than the meme depicts. Dwarf Fortress was unplayable before they added actual graphics to it. I wish things moved between tiles fluidly like in Rimworld instead of it being a slideshow, but I can actually stand to play Dwarf Fortress now. If the only video games that existed were text-based, I'd probably never play video games again. Ps2 era graphics on the other hand, hell yeah. 90s era dos graphics are passable too. But PLEASE no text adventure games.

Abandon widespread* texture use, return to polygons+vertex colors+in-engine cutscenes (and similar data-saving techniques like soundfonts).

This was using a feature that likely isn't viable (for common use) due to performance.

:::

And for something not-by-me, see Spyro's vertex color skyboxes.

* general normal maps are ok, but I didn't have much luck beyond using generated noise for metal. I even tried some stuff with watercolor, maybe with better shaders it could work but untextured is easier.

Or another example, any material you can just apply without alteration (for instance, make something look like wood) is alright too. Maybe UV mapping is not too bad, but extra per-model work is not ideal.

There was an excellent text based RPG called Roadwarden that came out the other year. It's just text and illustrations so thought I'd use this post to mention it.

If small amounts of animation are allowed then WORLD OF HORROR was decent too.

Hyperbole and a half style artwork.

I've yet to actually play it, shame on me, but A Blind Legend took an interesting approach to being graphicsless!