Slay the Spire 2's early access build features placeholder art that is intentionally rough, aiming to clearly signal the game's unfinished state to players. Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano explained in an interview with GameSpot that this design choice is more than just a practical convenience.
Yano stated that the MS Paint-like aesthetic of the placeholder art is meant to "set the precedent that some of the stuff is incomplete, and I wanted to make it obvious." He believes that "things being obviously incomplete is actually pretty important for early access." While acknowledging that the art team might have preferred to be further along, Yano anticipated that "we were going to be drawing a bunch of garbage during early access."
The deliberate choice to use art that "has to look like shit" is intended to prevent players from assuming that nearly complete-looking art is representative of the final product. This approach pushes back against an increasing expectation for early access titles to exhibit a high degree of polish.
Yano also shared his perspective on using such placeholder art over AI-generated assets. He suggested that artists who have experienced the creative process might feel "a kind of sadness" if their work were replaced by AI, as "You don't see the path that somebody took to get better and develop their own style." He added that when a game is developed in a studio's own style, there is little reason to use AI to mimic it.