This video is an overview on how you could approach staging your game, using existing assets or sprites. There are some specifics that might not apply to your specific project, but I think the general idea of pre-visualization can help in making your scene or level look nicer. This specific platformer uses something that simulates 2.5D parallax together with a tilemap.
If you want to see more unscripted content, I have started a Patreon:
https://patreon.com/Nonsensical2D