While we had a playable game, it didn’t really look like anything someone would want to spend time with. Placeholder art is great for getting things working, not so good however for getting someone to want to play your game, so it was probably time for us to drop in some actual art as we were now being asked ‘is it supposed to look like that?’
With all projects, there’s a point where things go from being a code-base to a game you can play. It’s normally quite early in the project and it’s when you start to see what you’ve got, if things work the way you thought they might, is it good; is it even fun?