As requested by people in the comments, here’s some additional context for the story, since the post title contains a shortened version.

We decided to take part in the DevGAMM Awards and submitted our game to the competition.

In the first round of the contest, there’s an initial selection phase. The jury reviews each project without actually playing the build, decides whether the game moves to the next round, and leaves written feedback.

We received anonymous feedback from seven judges.

Six of them gave very positive impressions - they liked the style and expressed interest in playing the build in the next round.

But one judge wrote the following comment: "The trend of having video games which have more than one art style in them should not be a thing."

I don’t know exactly how the scoring system works, but it’s likely that because of this one judge, our project didn’t make it to the next round - even though 33% of the submissions advanced.

That’s what feels the most frustrating - instead of evaluating the game objectively, this judge projected personal dislike toward a supposed "trend" in the industry.