I had a light system working in GameMaker that when a shadow was casted it would be in the shape of the object, not just a shadow area. Check out the gif below to see what it looked like
In all the threads about 2d shadows and all the examples in the asset store they only cast shadows in an area shape. Not sure how to explain it. They only look like this
This is great if you have a light on the ground with the player. But if you are trying to depict a sun’s light on a 2d side scrolling platformer then you would want the first example