After Hitch reviewed my level, I felt like reviewing his level as well although I didn’t post in the Review Exchange topic or something. Anyway, this level deserves a review. Behold!

First of all, the level name is pretty interesting. ‘Daring Rebels’ doesn’t say much about the level. Also, this is Hitch’s second Battle level, and the second one with this tileset.

First comes the gameplay. While Hitch said that my level had bad flow, this level’s flow isn’t perfect either. But a level doesn’t need a perfect flow, just a good flow. I can say that the level’s flow is good enough here. The level’s layout is interesting, the author has used One Ways and vines to connect platforms.. which is a style I’m starting to like more. Vines are pretty underused in levels, and that while they’re good to have. The warps in the level are useful, because one of the warps take you to a carrot and the coinwarp leads to another carrot, a Full NRG. More about that later. Also, the spring at 29,74 is not visible because of the layer 3 eye candy.

Talking about the eye candy.. it feels a bit chaotic in places, but overall it looks nice. The idea from The Chasm(not The Chasam) is awesome indeed. The level uses all layers, some more than the others but it gives a nice effect. The background is pretty original as well. Some of the caves look a bit like the ones in Return of the Doomed, particularly on the left side. Around 81,62 you need to put layer 5, those are tilebugs ;(

Overall, really nice eye candy but those bugs need to be fixed.

Then the placement.. like I said, the level has a coin warp. There are 8 silver coins and 1 gold coin, and 4 of those silver coins are really close to the gold coin. The ammo placement.. well.. the level could use other events than just coins, ammo and Power-Ups. The shapes of ammo are good anyway. The level doesn’t have two groups of the same type of ammo close to each other. The Gun9 Power-Up is not very useful here, but it’s a nice add-on to the level. Could use some ammo around it, but not necessary. The level has 2 +1 carrots and one Full NRG that you get in the coin warp. The two +1s are at the bottom of the level, one of them is in a warp at the left side and the other is on the right side. The three Power-Ups are placed well, maybe the Seek PU is too close to the Bouncy PU. The RF PU is around the bottom middle. The Seek PU could have been placed somewhere at the left side as well, or the Bouncy PU.

And then the question: Does this level have a chance in the contest?

This level could go for 3rd place maybe. Cooba’s level and PoL’s level have a great chance to win, I don’t know about the third place. Basically every other serious level(so not Sacrush’s level, sorry Sacrush) have a chance for the 3rd place, but we don’t know yet. It also depends on the judges. It’s hard to say what this level misses. Maybe it’s the layout, maybe it’s the flow, or something else. I also think it’s a bit dark with the dark palette of this tileset, but that palette hasn’t been used before. It’s easy to switch between palettes, but the level has to fit the palette as well. And this level fits the palette. I give this level a 7.7. It’s a nice level overall, and deserves a download recommendation.

Daring Rebels, a battle level of Hitch for Purplejazz his contest.

Let’s start with the eyecandy, which is definitely one of the strongest things in this level. First of all, you used (almost) all the tiles in this set, so that’s a good thing to start with. This set gives you lot of opportunities for some good eyecandy. The EC is everywhere different, not repeated too much. I especially like the stalagmites, you placed them well and they really look nice. You used all layers, which worked out quite well. The different speeds of the lavafalls are nice. And yes, DS is right about those bugs, please fix them.

Okay, now something about the gameplay. First of all, the PU’s are well spread through the whole level, which is a good thing. Seeks and bouncies, more important in this level in my opinion are at the top, while the two +1 cars are at the lower half, which kinda forces you to use all areas in this level. The flow is okay in most parts of the level. Though especially the area with the Electro PU isn’t. I don’t like the combination of red springs with float ups at all, but most other springs are placed well.

Finally something about the placement of stuff. Let’s start with the carrots. There are two +1 cars and a Full NRG which you can get by using 50 coins at the coinwarp. Well, fifty coins is a lot to get, especially with 3 useful PU’s, so that is quite a good idea, sinc collecting coins is fun. The level contains four PU’s, electro is maybe useless (but it fills up that area well), the other three are well spread. Seeks are hidden in a warp, which is good. The ammo is placed well in nice shapes. The level has all kinds of ammo which is fine too. Overall the ammo is placed well, leaving no empty areas.

You used your space well, putting four PU’s, three carrots, some coins and a coinwarp in this level, but quite well spread. As I said before, you need to use the whole level, which is a good thing. I’m not sure about the layout round the coinwarp, but well, it isn’t disturbing as well, so I guess that’s okay.

Download recommendation: – Yes, this will play well in some battle server. Especially collecting coins is fun!

+ Good atmosphere
+ Variaty in eyecandy

- Red springs with float ups

Rating: 8.0

Huh?
Tileset isn’t included.
The set in the zip archive is xlmdamn2.j2t,
but level uses xlmdamn6.j2t!

Could u repair?

To start this review, I must point out that this level is really great based on eyecandy. There is enough of it, but not too much either. Some levels do not manage to do this, as they either have too much or there is some empty space in the level’s layers. I really should’ve thought this when making that my newest level (<— shameless self-promotion).

Well, onto the detailed part.

EYECANDY :

9

As I stated above, this level has a great amount of eyecandy and it is used in that way it doesn’t look bad (like in some levels, there’s just too much of it). This is possibly the best part of the level. There’s only one point. You know those lavafalls with stalagmites/stalactites? They should be in back layers, as they affect visibility in a negative way. This deletes some points from the total score. GAMEPLAY

9

This level’s gameplay includes good flow through the level, as the powerups are scattered all around and the carrots are also separated, thus forcing everyone to move around the level to collect carrots, ammo and coins. This is definitely a great point, as it minimizes the possibility to create any campspots at all. From my quess, the only spot you could camp is under the seeker tube, so you could pick off any enemies that come through it. AMMO PLACEMENT :

9

There is just enough ammo that if you just keep moving, you will not get to shoot with blaster :P. I keep this as a positive sight of a level, enough ammo to keep the flow going without getting into a blaster fight. There is not other things to say about in this category – maybe use some innovative ways to place ammo? THEMING :

10

GREAT. The usage of “Damn + Dark” with this music made this level’s theming extremely great. All those dark backgrounds and the dark feeling in this level made this a great example of usage of these Damn+ tilesets. You didn’t even have to lower the lightning level below the normal to make it look like a dark cave. ITEMS :

8

This level has a coinwarp, what leads the player into a full carrot. This was a little bad thing, as there’s 50 coin limit and there’s only nine coins in this level. This is too tough limit just for a full carrot. You should either change the limit, add more coins or make the secret better, for instance with a full ammo stash.

TOTAL

9

This level surely deserves this 9 due to the great work I see that is put into it. There aren’t many bad things, but there are so many good things, like the stomp-forced seeker PU, removing any possible seeker flooding.

Now, I see I made this my longest review yet, and you can be happy about it. There’s over 2800 characters in it.

Make more levels like this.