Yeah im not a fan of AI either, but this game scratches such a specific itch that nothing else does, and at least has some genuine effort put into it on the gameplay aspect. If the game ever really pops off in popularity though I would really really really love for actual hand-drawn art to be used for the game.
The use of AI definitely has me hesitant to share the game and support it financially but so far the dev has unexpectedly earned quite a bit of trust with how they treat the game and community, if there's ever an announcement of plans to hire an artist to create hand-drawn assets for the game i'd be far more interested in supporting the project.