Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

One thing the official JJ2 releases did that didn’t catch on too much in fanmade levels is creating multiplayer levels to accompany single player levels. All the different commercial JJ2 releases included multiplayer levels, some of them better remembered than others, but only a handful of fanmade single player packs—e.g. Rabbit Honor Guard, Lost World—have done the same.

So, it’s nice to see a CTF version of Snowball Valley.

CandionV, which this is ostensibly based on, has always been an incredibly garish tileset, but Frosted Peaks plunges deep into the soft blues and grays area of the color spectrum and never leaves, with just enough contrast between ground and background to make clear what is solid. A lovely static aurora in the background adds a little bit of green but is rarely very visible, as layers upon layers of trees and mountains fill the distance lower down. This should serve to make it easy for the player to know where they are (at least vertically), though the different layers all look similar enough in their color distribution that this effect is somewhat muted.

What’s especially interesting about the gameplay is the focus on weapons that shoot downwards, with both bouncer (powerup)s and rollers included. The layout also goes out of its way to support them: not only are there lots of platforms hanging above the main structures of the level, the CTF base areas also invite downward weapons through the bridges that otherwise serve as ways for flagholders to escape. But these guns, which have perhaps the most utility when fired from the top of the level, are found mostly at the bottom. So a player who takes the time to explore and gather resources from multiple areas in the level should have the advantage over a player who spawns and immediately runs back into battle around the bases or carrots.

In general there are a lot of clever details here, both visual and mechanical. Waterfalls are frozen in place and don’t use animated tiles. The thin Stonar platforms are everywhere and make navigation more interesting, and the constant poles surrounding them make them feel that much more integral to the level as a whole. The slide events will probably have minimal effects on competitive gameplay but they’re nice to have anyway. It’s good.