I've played some surprisingly good games with untextured polygons.

• Star Fox

• Race the Sun

• Carrier Command 2

That's not to say that you couldn't take the same games and make a flashier version that I wouldn't like more, but I do kind of think that it forces the developers not to use glitz as a crutch. Like, if you're going to make a game with untextured polygons and sell it, you are going to have to have solid gameplay.

Another benefit is that it's easier to revise a game if you haven't committed a lot of expensive assets into particular game design decisions. I think that a long, iterative development process with gameplay revisions is probably a good thing for gameplay.

I kind of wish that one could more-frequently get commercial "HD" DLC for small-budget games, like indie pixel-art games. I think that low-res pixel art is a good way to reduce asset costs, let the player's brain fill in a lot of the detail, but if a game does turn out to be successful and I like it, I'd like to be able to also get a more-detailed version. That way, I'm only paying for assets on games with good gameplay.

I've seen a small handful of games do that, but it's definitely not the norm.

Maybe AI upscaling will help.