I quite liked the 'low grade' graphics of Normalin and it gives it a sort of signature style.
I do agree with your lessons learned, sometimes you need to trip and fall before you can stand up tall. I get that you were trying to guess what people might like, but I would say is it may be better to release a game, see what people say and work from there.
A bunch of other people also like retro graphics (myself included). But I've recently come to realize that it isn't so much the low poly style at fault as it is my lack of skill. Low poly art can be done well by the right people. And I'm not the right person for that (I'm a programmer for the most part 😅)
As for the second part of your comment, I've done that. I released a demo and tried to hear what people had to say. But at the time I didn't get the "numbers" that I hoped for. I possibly lacked the patience but definetely did a poor job marketing this game. The only thing I did was post this on deviantart and itch.io, so only my current watchers could find it at first. (itch.io hides NSFW games very well, and you can only find them via collections or by following the author; and deviantart... is not the place that it once was)
Hopefully now that more people are exposed to Normalin Run, they will find my newer games quicker.
