My biggest gripe with Mother fangames and certain Mother inspired RPGs is that Mother as a series was always designed to be subversive so trying to harken to Mother via a fangame to pay tribute to it seems counter-productive
Mother 2 was gonna be a lot more different than Mother 1 and Mother 3 went through drastic revisions including artstyle to subvert what a Mother game should even look like
Say what you want about the most popular Mother inspired games like Undertale, Lisa, and Omori
They at least stand on their own and don't feel like unofficial Mother 4's particularly because they sought inspiration beyond the Mother series.
In all honesty, a "Mother-like" with an artstyle based on Robert Crumb comics, a story inspired by Sarah Kane scripts, and music inspired by Trout Mask Replica would probably be more "Mother" than some dude's Mother-like that was identical to Mother 2 in tone, humor, gameplay, etc and had not-Mr. Saturns just cause.