Slay the Spire 2 lead says the garbage placeholder art is "important" and gen AI would ruin it: "People would judge the game as if it's a 1.0, fully developed video game"

Slay the Spire 2 screenshot of in-game placeholder art of The Regent.

Slay the Spire 2 devs are purposely choosing to use delightfully "shit" human-made placeholder art in their roguelike instead of AI-generated assets, the game's lead says – not just because the latter looks "lazy," but because "it's important" that the unfinished art looks distinctly, well, unfinished.

Speaking to GameSpot in a new interview, Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano discusses Slay the Spire 2's approach to placeholder art, which you can find a bunch of in the game's Timeline. And, seriously, you can't miss it – I mean it with all the love in my heart when I say these artworks look like they were created in MS Paint, but according to Yano, this is very intentional.