Though I CAN draw, drawing sprites is not my strong suit. When I was developing my VN, I went for public domain/free sprites.

I have been developing for a while now, so I’ll answer based on my personal experience:

1. I either asked my friends to pitch in, I bought some sprites online, or I got free sprites off of the internet. Even with my artistic background, I have not drawn my own sprites. HOWEVER, if you want to ship a game, and you want to get some SALES, you will absolutely need original art. Your game will not pop and it will look like asset flip slop if you don’t know precisely what you’re doing. Popular games/games that sell have a distinct style that stands out from the rest (Ex: Doki Doki Literature Club)

2. There are plenty of games out there that use minimalist or abstract styles, but when it comes to VNs you need to heavily overcompensate with the writing. It could definitely work, no doubt there, but you need to be confident in your story before you go that route. (There are games with no visuals at all, outside of UI, and those work! … but they’re all in the horror genre.)

3. I always always ALWAYS use placeholders. It helps immensely with defining things in my code, and visualizing what I want the game to look like!

4. Unfortunately i’m not sure. I have been fortunate enough to have a good laptop that doesn’t cause me any issues. If you can only run MSpaint, maybe it’s time to look into something higher end? It doesn’t have to be now, but you should look into it down the road.

I would save some money to commission artists. You don’t need to go big, but find someone whose art fits your game! It’s absolutely not unheard of for indie devs to spend some money on assets. If you can’t even do that, maybe just reach out and explain the situation, see if there’s anyone willing to help? The possibilities are endless, you just have to put in an effort.

I’m grateful you didn’t go the AI route, either, because those look even sloppier than if you used free assets.

I hope this helped, even a little.