Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

This is fantastic. When I loaded up the level, my first reaction was “here comes the painful slime green and blue of Diamondus” but I quickly forgot that notion after seeing your excellent use of the tileset.

Eyecandy:
There is variety everywhere. This level doesn’t seem to specialize in a particular theme or weapon loadout, which for a standalone level is fine. I love the backgrounds that peek through the hole in the wall. The level doesn’t really suffer from the usual REPETITIVE scenery, but it does get to be a bit much sometimes in relation to how much stuff is crammed into a given area. It’s also a pretty tight squeeze through most (but not all) of the level. Efficient use of space? Definitely. Feeling claustrophobic? A bit.

Gameplay:
There were a few things I took issue with. Mainly:
- The warp portal exit near the second witch spawns you right into her. This is not fun when you’re on your last frog legs.
- One area where the ceiling came to a point, there were some hurt events that I ran into blindly. Throughout the rest of the level I avoided such areas until I realized you only slapped a hurt event onto that particular one. I’d just get rid of it since it’s not obvious. Either that, or you could change all of them to do this which would screw up some areas of the level (the gem trail, etc).
- One of the trigger crates could not be destroyed by Jazz (the one leading to the bouncer ammo). I don’t know whether this was intentional or not. I kinda liked it because it forced me to dig through my backpack for some TNT.

The rest of the gameplay was really quite good. In some of the tight areas – mainly at the beginning of the level – I couldn’t clear the spikes. I would have preferred a spring on the ceiling that pushes you back rather than stalactites. The use of food and gems was very tasteful. Baddies, a little less so but there’s only so much you can do with them.

Using the classic music for DIamondus fit rather well. The whole level had a bit of an oldschool feel to it with the way it was all narrow corridors – the sort of thing you’d see back when you couldn’t fit much on your monitor :p

I could care less that there was no storyline. The level would be better with one, but not by much. I like stories that keep you in suspense over multiple levels anyway.

If I could make any definite recommendations on improving your levelmaking, I’d say… allow the player to “breathe” a bit more. Open areas and more checkpoints (maybe; I don’t like dying, but they were well-placed in this level). I just couldn’t help the feeling that I was being squeezed through a sewer pipe at times. If at all possible, choose a tileset that is less painful on the eyes in the future.

This is real quality work. I hope you make more.

I appreciate the reviews.
I have already made a few changes and I got the text working. Also some collapsing scenery, boll platforms and Spike bolls are added in. I’d re-upload it soon.

Also note that this level is supposed to be narrow with a lot of spikes. You are moving through caves, through mines!

Hi. I have finally found something interesting
Mines Of Diamondus by ThunderWalker:
Now the review:

You start with Jazz/Spaz/LOri and you get to the first text
(which you could fix by the way) , and after that the show begins.

Story: Well no storyline but i won’t deduct too much out of it.

Eyecandy: The typical Diamondus tileset with 90% caves,
there weren’t too many bugs, although i have found one and after that i died because of a bat; it was covered but layer 3 contain the cave blue as well.
The layer 5 is used as well for some background cave, and layer 8 the same, layer 7and 6 with caves and holes full of leaf(or whatever that green thing is.)

Gameplay You start on a platform, it’s quite dark, there are some spikes down so be careful, there are quite a few enemies although it would be more usefull to put hurt floor instead of bees on the spikes, there are bats, hidden everywhere, carrots hidden, coins,ammo crates and barrels, there is a large variety of enemies although some only appear once or appear many in one place, there are a lot of warps, guns, food and many others.
Another thing about spikes: There are near end which is not good!
The checkpoints aren’t quite often met: I died at 1/4 of level and started from the begining, because there are only 2 checkpoints in all the level. Anyway it’s quite linear but it is a good gameplay.
And you could try putting more enemies in hard mode instead of pilling enemies on normal mode. It’s quite hard.

Ammo placement: As i said before there are all weapons, although i just wonder what’s with the electro gun?
Anyway, it’s enough for the entire level,but sometime i just felt like: why don’t just use the blaster instead of all these?
fire on bees, rapiers and raven(that’s arguable).
bouncer for…. enemies..
RF for enemies or boss.
TNT for crates.
and the rest for boss, because from what’ i’ve analysed in the level, all Destruct Scenery are with Weapon 0 so you can shoot them wih anything(except freezer ammo)….

Enemy placement
There are bees on the horisontal spikes, there are bats hidden everywhere, dragons spit fire at you when “you need the most”, a lot of tough turtles, and some are just in one place or more in 1 place and appear once in the whole level.(eg: the rapiers).
The boss is the schwarzenguard; i sincerely hope nobody has 1 life right before he/she fights it. There is a “low” spike from which you can’t escape other than jjfly…
It’s a good thing the spikes before the boss stomp blocks aren’t “spiky”; no hurt event… yeey!.

The Result:
Story: None: 7.5/10
Gameplay: Good but still room for more. 8.5/10
Ammo placement: Good, there are all guns although some are useless…. 8.5/10
Enemy_place. Lots of enemies, though, the fact that there are too many is making it hard 8.5/10
Originality: Yes, original level with a cavey design. 9.3/10
Bugs: Almost none: 9/10
Miscelaneous: You could learn making some texts…. 8/10

Final mark: 7.5+8.5+8.5+8.5+9.3+9+8 / 7 => 8.3 with DR

It has been a while since I’ve downloaded anything from here but I liked the design so I tried it. I have to say this is a very good level. The often small space and the cave design is very well done. Though I had to get used to the fact that ceiling spikes actually work here (which is good). I got every type of ammo with the exception of seekers and pepper spray. The bouncer got really useful at certain places mostly when I was low on health. Health was actually enough, whenever I needed only 1 hit I got a carrot. Even if not, I survived far enough to get one. I found quite a lot of secrets, I think there were even a few which couldn’t be accessed though I’m not 100% sure. You can argue that it’s too linear, too simple etc. but it depends on who’s playing. For example I like levels which don’t divide 20 times in 35 places. Yes-yes and I’m a horrible person for liking the original levels as well. I like when I know where I’m actually going. Also I couldn’t care less about a story. J.K. Rowling may be a good writer but I doubt she’s a good level creator. So there’s no point in making a bad story for a good level, as well as making good stories for a level that sucks. I think it’s perfectly okay that you used the original music, don’t know how you think about it but I like the original tracks. Another reason why I like this level is because you can see that this wasn’t a 2 hour work. It is really long and still very precisely done. I really can’t find too many things that could lower the rating. Maybe that there are very few saving points. I can’t really complain about the difficulty since in my opinion a level needs about as much difficulty as this level has (well maybe a little bit less).

My rating is no less than 9.5 and even if it’s not a perfectly accurate rating I can calmly recommend this level for any player.