So, my brother and I have been working on a 2D side scrolling Metroidvania type game for about a year now. The game is getting pretty large, and what I've noticed is that the frame rate begins to drop dramatically after playing for a while and going through several layouts. On a fresh startup, the game runs fine, but eventually the FPS goes down the drain. If you restart the game, problem fixed, but we surely don't want players to have to restart the game in order to have a consistently playable frame rate.
Has anyone else experienced this that can offer any advice? My initial thought would be that some things aren't getting unloaded from memory after layout changes, and it eventually bogs everything down. But everything I've read from Ashley's blogs seems to indicate that C2 loads and unloads everything per layout.
I know a CAPX would be helpful, but I'm hesitant to post it because we have tons of hand made pixel art that I'd rather not make readily available on the internet .
If I need to offer any more details, please ask. I appreciate any help!
EDIT: Our game is only for desktop, so we shouldn't have a hardware bottleneck