I played some Tiny Life recently. I liked it, but it is a bit simple, and the bigger issue I had with it is just that there isn't much to it, especially to build. There's like two counters, two fridges, one shower... from my perspective it really needs an artist to just go ham and make tons of options so there's stuff to actually decorate with, even if stats are the same.
That's a tough decision to make, especially in today's gaming marketing, but I applaud them for stepping back and recognizing what they had wasn't good enough to sell. Blizzard made that decisions years ago with Starcraft Ghost, the Blizzard of today wouldn't make that same call any more.
The art style was "what if we target the uncanny valley specifically?" It was the strangest thing that seemed to target realism but without the technology that actually makes it look reasonable. I didn't really care about what it looked like though. Just having some game competing with Maxis would have been nice. Cities: Skylines brought the city builder out of the pit it had been festering in with no competition. I was hoping this would do the same. Hopefully the other projects can do that still.