fisrt bad ass :
Sculptris is great to quickly prototype and make your characters or mobs , you put the main shapes quickly before retopology.
That's the way i prefer instead of modeling low poly directy , it's lot more intuitive (Add/substract volume ,smooth etc ..)




Retopo finished, later texture painting and rigging animating !


This is working on the game i understand why a bunch of indie game makers take some retro way in graphics to concentrate on gameplay/features:
-Ultra low poly models
-2D sprites
-retro low res textures)
etc ...
(Or because they don't have skills to do realitic or good graphics some times also)