That is true!. However you know how most gamers are, they think they need the latest and greatest to play games. The forced dependence on GPUs has not only made gaming more expensive, but increases the burden on developers. I can play Quake 2 on my CPU at a very high framerate, I'd imagine Zortch can run similarly given its simpler graphics. There are downsides for sure, but on the other hand SW rendering is indeed more portable (as it can be written purely in a portable language such as C), less bloated and eliminates the dependency on GPUs so it will be supported almost anywhere as every computer has a CPU, while not all computers (such as embedded devices) have a GPU (or, if they have it, it may not be sufficient, supported or have the required drivers). SW rendering may also be implemented in a simpler way and it may be easier to deal with as there is, for example, no need to write shaders in a special language, manage transfer of data between CPU and GPU or deal with parallel programming. SW rendering is truly the KISS approach (Keep It Simple, Stupid).
I'm sure you could replicate the game in Unity or Godot as well, but those engines are also very bloated. Unity especially.