JV spends astonishingly little on art because his games
don't make very much. His audience is small (I am part of it) and his audience values that particular kind of game way more than it does art--
and the marginal return from making it look a little better to appeal to a little wider of a crowd is historically negative. He cited as much, and he's talked about his numbers in concrete terms before.
Every game you listed, every one, has spends at least one FTE or FTE equivalent, either in sweat equity or in cold hard cash, on their art. (And at least in the case of Steamworld, more than one!) JV's games literally don't make enough money to pay that person. What the heck do you expect him to do?
You're only mentioning the successes, what about all the Steam failures? Your post ignores that, unlike most of those relatively-very-expensive indie games that come out, go "plunk", and their developers go back to a real job, JV has successfully kept doing this for twenty-five years. He's had stinkers and still survived. The machine keeps cranking because of a relentless focus on cost control and making the game that somebody like me wants, even if it means that somebody like you adjusts your pince-nez and waxes on about his "mediocrity".
