The difference is, this is "normal" geometry, with fixed 64x64 textures (or similar) mapped with hard edges (nearest-neighbour filtering, no bilinear/trilinear/blur).

Voxels is quite different: the world is made of cubes of 1 size or various size cubes (any texturing method can apply here, or without, some even use gradient shaders on the cubes).

So you get that pixel art vibe, mapped into the 3D world with smooth movements. The 3D window isn't made of stairs.

In this case, this is done "properly". Because some developers just use normal geometry, normal texturing with bilinear filtering, and slap a post processing shader on the camera view, which makes the view "blocky" without the world actually being blocky - which is cheap, and typically looks cheap.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it was "never" about the graphics. There was definitely a sense of wonder when I first saw Wolfenstein 3D, then Doom, and later Quake. It was the graphics that got you first and made you think, "Oh wow, I can wander around this world?!" Thankfully, they were fun games as well.

I think what's getting people interested in this project is the sense of wonder they get from the visuals. Who knows if they can deliver, but there's something about how this looks that gives me a sense of wonder.

As a child of the 80s, I see it as an homage to King’s Quest and games like that (with a touch of Defender of the Crown), but I suppose the beauty of an alpha release ad is it’s simply a Rorschach blot for us to project whatever we want to see on it.

What separates being out from being in? None of us can play the game yet.

Any game you'd recommend where that's not true?