Godot and Unity seem to be capable of doing that quite effectively. I guess they use 2D based on 3D decals with texel interpolation off. I did 2D by drawing 320x240 and scale the canvas up 3x, but it blurs it. I love the parallax in level two, such powerful colors.
As far as I know, Godot uses "pure 2D" unlike Unity. But I am no expert in this regard^^ Apparently it's "easier" to build pixel art games in Godot than in Unity. And yes, in Godot is a feature to import all sprites in "true 2d pixel art" to get rid of compression :) Which engine did you use for your project? Thank you! The color palette however, is from lospec.com :) I use it quite frequently ^^
That wasn't an engine per se. In the past I've been coding in Blitz3D, recently I wrote a converter for the 2D part using the JS 2D canvas. I guess scaling the canvas is just the wrong way. I also code in JS, but it's so picky, development in the Blitz3D IDE is much faster, which is why I went that way. I got Godot installed, but I usually having a hard time with Scenegraph hierarchy based editors, as I prefer entity component systems.