There were old games for 2D sprite based consoles that had a 3D look (and maybe Rayman did this technique too). Donkey Kong Country (SNES) is a good example (there were others though). Donkey Kong Country is a 2D game, but it looks like 3D models (consider its age). They (and other games) were done by way of actually creating 3D models and rendering them to 2D and then creating sprites out of the renders. If you wanted to go that route, you’d have to create the 3D models and animations anyway, so to save steps and extra effort, I’d probably just stick to a 3D engine unless you want to impose the additional challenge of 2D. If your target is a modern platform, it’s probably not worth actually doing 2D.

AFAIK Rayman was always on 3D capable systems, but I’m actually not 100% sure. I mean the original release was on hardware capable of 3D rendering (Playstation), but I never played that version and idk if it was using 3D rendering, but just restricting camera and movement to the style of a 2D platformer, or if it is actually 2D. I think the earliest version I played was Dreamcast and it’s been a while. A few months ago I was playing the PC versions of Rayman. Whether it’s truly a 2D render or 3D, it’s beautiful either way and you have choices (depending on your target platform): 3D with camera/player movement restricted to 2D, 3D models rendered to 2D sprites/animations, create 2D art assets and stay in 2D.

A hobby of mine is writing code for old (sprite/tile based) game systems. I’ve never completed a game or released one, so idk if I count as a indie game developer, but I can probably answer some questions as it pertains to traditional sprite based hardware and limitations, but I suspect what you actually are interested in is making a game for a modern game console (or computer) using 3D game engine to make a 2D style platformer. There’s also modern 2D game engines as well if you actually wanted to restrict yourself to 2D, but if you want 3D look, you’ll probably want to just do 3D.

If you actually want to make a game for an old sprite based hardware and want to collaborate, I’d be interested in talking with you. In this case the challenge of working with 2D sprites is out of necessity due to hardware limitations.

Whenever you see something so uniquely cool in a video game that you wonder how they did it, there’s often a GDC talk to go over it and teach others how it’s done at a high level. I haven’t watched this one personally, but the chapter names sure seem to indicate this has what you’re looking for.

The music levels in that game were SO GOOD!!

Unfamiliar with the game, but on 3D animations on 2D games, some times it’s how the engine is used.

For example, Castlevania SotN from what I’ve seen, runs on a 3D environment, but with the camera in a fixed point and the characters moving within the plane of the camera’s view. This allows using far less polygons, to be within the limited amount PS1 games could have while having great visuals. This also allowed to have the aforementioned 3D graphics, like from save points and the demon books from the library part of the castle.

Similarly, despite not having 3D graphics in the traditional sense, iirc Hollow Knight uses a similar fixed camera technique as SotN, but added a moving layered background to give the sense of depth.

Some more examples come to mind, but as, again, unfamiliar with Rayman, Idk how much I’d be straying from the topic.

What is normals.me? Stackoverflow alternative?