We greatly appreciate your detailed review on our game! <3
Indeed it's getting harder to notice anything going on with your character in the late game. We'll take your critique into consideration and see what we can do to make the cue much easier to notice.
Regarding the aesthetic, it's a kind of style called 'vaporwave', it's a combination of 2d and 3d assets to make it feel surreal, and the color palette makes it feels dreamy. Most of the assets are classic retro stuffs, so it kind of makes you feel nostalgic in some way. I guess this is also a kind of 'retro-future' sub-genre.
As for how we came into this idea, we honestly don't know, we were just brainstorming and this came into our mind. We all agreed that this kind of style is very fresh and unique as compare to pure sci-fi. I can say this is all brand new to us artists, and we were very much excited to try this style out. Though we encountered a road block very fast. Initially we were thinking to make it more cohesive as in all 2d handdrawn assets. Halfway in we found out that the results wasn't as satisfying as we cannot convey the surreal feeling of vaporwave with pure 2D assets. Working on a completely new style plus time constraint, we don't really have the luxury to sit there and continue experimenting further with pure 2D, and we were even considering giving up on this whole vaporwave idea. Still, we reaally wanted to see a game working out in this style, and this is the end result!
Once again we thank you very much on playing our game and taking the time to write this review.