Yeah that was pretty much the intent behind the game, making a sort of mix between a retro shmup and a PC space sim (even if i went more towards the arcade side of the spectrum cause it felt like it would be more fun) to capture the feel of some of the missions in these games where you had quite sizable fleet battles XD
Glad you liked the graphics ^^
They are a bit of a mixed technique : they come from a 3D base where i modelled a bunch of parts in blender and rendered at a tiny resolution, then i reworked them in gimp by hand to make the final ships and get the look i wanted, plus the paintjobs when a ship needed faction variants. I only have 4 ships i then made in full 3D for the cover art.
So indeed in a way it’s done in a similar way as the old arcade titles that had fairly detailed and smoothly animated sprites.
Hopefully this gave you a bit of insight on how i made it, thanks for giving my game a go, and your interest :)