Why are so many users gushing over this games 3D environment? It's empty and cel shaded, it's about as normal as normal gets but people are eating it up left right and centre.

It reminds me of standard indie games with cel shading.

Because it looks pleasant

Just looks like most cel shading games except you don't need shadows, complex details and everything has been run through a soft glower.

Reminds me of old flash games, just with high resolutions.

And that shader that makes everything glows... most of us aren't checking gaming releases on Steam so it just broke a barrier maybe.

Art direction > technical prowess.

The art direction is non-existant here. I think people are just liking the technical smoothness of it but it uses a 3D library for that?

Strong disagree, art direction is about how the game looks. For example this is their choices for how to render the scene and how they achieved that technically: https://x.com/glecollinet/status/1783805898428715070

I honestly don't understand how you could look at something with that strong a visual style and think there was no intention.

Just because you use the standard graphics development blocks of a game does not mean it has significant art direction.

Why is there a couch with no real TV, why is there an opening at the top with no couch or seat looking out, why are all the development techniques just base level shader passes? Why is there no new take on what space ship interiors look like? Why is there no detail?

Ahh, okay you just don’t know enough to know enough. None of those complaints show that the game lacks art direction, some even have extremely little to do with it and some of them are really obvious artistic choices.

I know enough, and they do.

This is the thread that is here to remind us that lots of people in the tech industry aren't gamers, and especially not PC/indie gamers.