No Pixel Shaders. Every scene element is just a png image at its source, so it's the image with an alpha channel - all of that put together in the scene. And some of the elements are quite large (the format of the project is 720p), which is probably why things slow down.
The idea is simply that I can basically concept and design everything in Photoshop and then quickly put all the layers into seperate png files and layout them again in Construct.
I haven't yet created tiled grass and so on for the ground, so the grass patches are 3-4 grass 'chunks'.
The motion blur version is the same thing but moBlur added in the global project properties. Nothing else, nothing fancy - but I really like the moBlur effect with that design, it gives it a sorta dreamy look.
Have you guys tried both layouts? You can use the tab key to switch between layouts, the second one has scrolling in it - a good way to test if the scene slows down.
Oh, btw, is there a way to check how much fps we get for the runtime? That'd be helpful for debugging and making sure that the thing runs even on older hardware.