Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

‘Sinister Winter’ is a stroll through a pretty frozen Easter landscape, full of (useless) gems and with a few puzzles to solve on your way to the boss at the end. I found it a decent experience, though it was marred a bit by a number of issues that at times prevented me from progressing.

Some of these were promptly fixed by Dragusela after I reported them, others remain. One lingering problem is that the level basically requires you to play as Spaz, but doesn’t tell you this. If you happened to select Jazz or Lori, a lot of platforming will be much more difficult and there are a couple of places where you can get stuck outright (e.g. 325×104). The level does have separate starting positions for Jazz and Spaz, so it seems like the intention was to support at least those two characters, but the rest of the level design doesn’t reflect that.

If you are playing with Spaz, the level is a decent trip, though there are a few places where it’s easy to get lost as you have to backtrack because a crate just appeared a couple of screens back because you just walked through a trigger zone. This is not signposted very well – and sometimes the trigger zone is easy to miss too because the level expects you to take a certain path, but another one is equally viable! The more straightforward parts of the level are okay, and the level overall looks quite nice, although there are also more than a few tile bugsand the music didn’t seem to fit very well (but nothing as subjective as music selection). I do wish enemy placement had been a bit more challenging – they’re not exactly difficult to avoid at the moment. It all ends with Uterus, who I found no fun to fight underwater, but I suppose that is a way to make it more challenging to beat.

Overall this is a promising new level but there are just a few too many bugs and issues to really recommend it. Another round of testing for the next effort might improve things.

I can’t seem to be able to play the level properly, half the tileset for me is missing. Isn’t there a tileset file for the mashup tileset used in the level? Because the level loads the Easterius tileset, but everything that is borrowed from a different tileset doesn’t load. Can someone help with the solution, I’ll post a review when I can properly play the level

What I particularly enjoy about this level is the degree to which it has distinct areas. Instead of being constants, elements like giant carrots or snaking vines or wooden platforms will appear in clusters, making those areas memorable and giving the player a feeling of progression. More such focuses keep turning up throughout the experience, including progressively larger cave areas, bigger uses of wooden platforms, and a lategame forest and underwater section. Besides that, there’s a good healthy amount of pickups all through the level, on the main path and in alcoves and in secrets, and enemies are varied even if never particularly dangerous. The layout and graphics do a lot to avoid becoming boring: the floor is constantly rising and falling as you move along, you change directions a lot, there’s some variety in wall thickness (although it would feel more Carrotus-y with some thinner platforms), various bridges and wooden things appear to keep things fresh.

Other than the rock pushing section, at the bottom, though, nothing in the course of the level ever feels unique… which, of course, is totally fine, it just means that the level isn’t transcendent. But I’d like to see more attention paid to how the level can feel distinctly Carrotus/Easter, particularly when using events instead of just stuff the tileset provides. Bird cages would feel at home here, for example. The wooden platforms and floors didn’t always feel great, due to a combination of how thin they are drawn and how inconsistently solidly they were placed (layer 3 vs 4). One area is covered in thorns that don’t hurt you, followed immediately by a small pit of thorns that does hurt you. Speed blocks are used in place of lock blocks. Diagonal carrots only ever sprout from the ceiling. Both(?) powerups can be obtained by shooting bouncers at them instead of using the intended warps.

It’s a good level with good, if never particularly challenging, gameplay, but it lacks a certain identity.