I'm really curious about this, Is anyone still using 2D, particularly (I know I'm gonna regret this phrasing) 'nice' 2D. I mean, doing something technologically that you don't get in your run of the mill 2D game. Sure, there's a ton of unexplored great gameplay, but about the only 'new' (engine) stuff that I can get my hands on is 2D soft shadowing by OrangyTang. I know that many people think that the whole 2D movement is over and tell others to move to 3D, but I just wanted to see if anyone's still doing anything cool with 2D. CJM

I love working on 2D games its great fun!

You know, all I hear about are people who steer clear of 2d games purely because they're not 3d - ie, not "new". But I'm actually one of those people who tend to steer clear of 3d games unless the gameplay is really something unique.

I'm going to get shunned for this, but from my point of view, if it's 3d, chances are, you've played it before.

I have nothing against 3d, but why did the industry have to use it to turn its back on innovation just because the kids were eating it up? With any luck they'll suck the concept dry (not likely), and we can all finally go back and pick up from where we left off before the craze.

But yes! I love 2d games - keep them coming =)

I'm making a simple 2D game.

There is still a lot that can be done with 2D, and in fact I think the interruption caused by 3D has pushed most people (including programmers) back in what they think 2D should be able to do and should look like. While simple things like adding alpha blending are certainly all the rage, I have yet to see more then a handful of 2D games that even meet the bar set in 1995 by Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (even the GBA port [Mario Advance 3] can't match all of the effects created by the Super FX-2 chip that was used on the SNES cartridge version). Simply put Yoshi's Island still represents the next step in 2D graphics, it's just that almost no one has bothered to follow (off the top of my head I can only think of Gish, an indie game that won the Innovation in Game Design award at the 2005 IGF).

What seperates these games from other 2D games is that they aren't just the same sprite mechanics, but with more colors or transparency. Even Stick Soldiers 3 is not much more then higher quality sprites doing exactly what could be done on the NES in 1983. What sets Yoshi's Island/Gish apart is that they treat sprites and the environment as more then just bounded box areas (a bunch of very rigid squares), making something that looks and feels far more organic and natural. The environment isn't a collection of straight lines, but of curves. The characters are not flat drawings superimposed aligned to a grid, but flexible objects that turn and even deform (for example when Yoshi jumps on a high jump ball, the ball compresses and deforms under him, like a real object). Physics play a big role in making the 2D world better (Gish is centered around physics for gameplay). Can you imagine if 3D shooters still used the non-existent physics of Doom 1? Instead of a rigid world you have bridges made from balanced beams that tilt as the play walks on them. Instead of being static, the environment reacts to the players presence. Enemies realistically move, instead of simply being drones that walk on air.