Comment by meheleventyone

The point of the OP (which I agree with) with is that the gameplay and the aesthetic are not orthogonal to one another. Even with Vampire Survivors which is not strictly beautiful the aesthetics are a big part of the gameplay. Largely the visuals and audio need to do several things:

- Make the game legible. A good example would be to reduce the whole game to boxes, you still need to differentiate things, so you might want to color them. Aesthetics in support of gameplay to make the game understandable.

- Add 'game feel'. This is where audio is especially important as you tend to notice the lack of good audio rather than its presence. But also 'juice', animations and what not all layer in.

- Support the fantasy. The name Vampire Survivors carries expectations that boxes do not match.

If you've ever done a lot of playtesting with your target audience one thing you'll find is that missing these elements gives you much worse feedback. Most notably legibility because it's so integral to being able to play a game but the others as well.

Game designers to an extent can get past this but it's still an attempt at extrapolation which is necessarily less concrete. Also if you're new to making games then you're going to make it harder to judge your own work.

The good thing about Vampire Survivors as an example is it shows that you don't need to do much but enough.