Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

We do get the occasional diagonal level, like Sub Junction 3 from Subtracted Space, but this is the most consistently diagonal one I can think of. Unfortunately it does showcase JJ2’s limitations with diagonal designs, such as flying into space instead of running down slopes; getting stuck running into walls; and a lack of weapons that can reliably fire in the direction you’re moving. Another issue is that there are no powerups and lots of warps that send you to an entirely random location, so there’s not much in the way of strategy here, you just go to random places in a random order and hope to run into someone. The lack of powerups is not helped by how many carrots there are (including some hidden behind layer 3). There are some fun visual experiments going on here, including a number of animated tiles, and it’s always good to see non-standard tilesets getting some appreciation, but ultimately this feels more like an art piece than a battle map. Look at it and smile, but don’t try to roast people.

I’m not able to do a full review right now, but it’s an amazing tileset. If I ever find the time and motivation to make a level again, this is the tileset I’m going to be using.

This design looks amazing! Battle near the lake is the perfect concept!

9.7/10!

~ The author uploaded a newer version of his survivor pack:
.
Survivor II Pack Platinum
https://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/4770/survivor-ii-pack-platinum/
(you can find it here, ..and it seems that the second survivorpack works to vote
.
.
// to the levels:
i added here some screenshots:
it show, how it did looks like when we first played it.

you have become really very good in drawing!!

its really Great Designed! :)
i like the way you desinghed it,

- for the background, i miss a bit a realistic water effect

+ you choosed a new desingh for "Diamondus ß"
i think this is good!

its new and it looks good.

that underground, do have a awesome eyecandy!!
about the slime or poison sea:
i think.. this is a very good concept, also very interesting..
and it inspire lots for any future projects
.
about the city ,
- i miss a bit places where my rabbit is in savety
(..but of course everything should be like this!!)
and i also like the idea of the bombs very much
.
- a bit short the lvl..
i wish it would be a bit bigger..
.
..but its really amazing!!, the slime/poison sea do have a awesome eyecandy
and i think: this idea is really good and inspire for any future projects
.
+ im endless much thankfull, for this new background feature!!!
.
.
about the overall concept, its a great work!!

im so much thankful for this "limited blaster" script!!
thanks so much for it!!
i was thinking about this over years..
but i was not able to code that.
now im endless much thankfull for your limited blaster script ;D
.
..and about that city tile.. looks pretty good…
[Rating removed, please review the levels the author made]

A good idea, very nicely inplemented (props for customization), and leveraging the latesr JJ2+ tech. What’s not to love?

I do like the use of split paths here, and some of the alternate dead end routes, though the rewards can be a little lacking for how long the routes are. It’s weird seeing single pickups floating isolated in the air, they usually come in groups of four or more in levels. But everything works all right, there are some good shape variations, not bad.

Cool weapon ideas that feel a bit unfinished. The weapons lack sounds and visual queues to help identify them. Neither weapon works as you would think. The teleport is too instant and spammable and causes nausea. Running with wings mid-air looks and feels weird. It feels like these ideas can be executed a lot better than they currently are.

sei ef, sei zirou, sei ARRRRR, sei es, en ou ou zii ei

F0R SN00ZE

A pretty decend 3 level pack by Spyro.

Once you get dropped into the level, you might notice 1 big improvement, that being the eyecandy with the background layers. I have to say, it’s a pretty noticable jump in quality compared to previous levels.

The level layout is pretty decent as well, with some split paths and secrets sprinkled in occasionally.

If I’m being honest, these levels feel like something that you would find in the Homemade Level section of The Secret Files, at least that was going through my mind while playing through them.

Though enemy and item density is improved compared to previous uploads, the levels can still feel a bit barren. I know from myself that I can often go overboard with item and enemy placement and make my levels cluttered, but I believe there can be more added to your levels. That way there will be less dead air areas while going through them. Especially considering how your level otherwise are pretty competently put together.

Overall, the improvement is noticeable, so keep it up!

A fun level! Nothing too revolutionary, but it does a good job of throwing new things at you often enough to stay interesting, and manages to be both not completely linear and not confusing, which is no small feat.

There are some neat ideas too, like the crate you destroy by hitting it from the bottom. One of the text signs even got a laugh out of me. Overall just a nice level that’s worth playing.

Finally, a new single player level I can check out :)

This is a really fun, well crafted level. If you like secret hunting, then there’s plenty to find here, you’ll also get a large percentage of your coins in secrets, though other than for being a completionist (which luckily I am, or at least try to be) the reward is not that big of a deal, plus it’s put right at the end, before the boss room. It also gives a 1Up powerup, which is usefull I guess, but the boss and the level overall isn’t difficult.

Enemies are standard turtles and lizards, but their placement is pretty well thought out, meaning you can’t just rush through the level. Tileset is the standard Easter tileset from Secret Files, which is fine since it’s an easter themed carrotus which is already a pretty varied and userfriendly tileset, though I wouldn’t have minded something else when it comes to the music, though that’s mostly a personal thing.

It’s too bad JJ2 never incorporated the end level score for enemies and pickups like JJ1 did, because 100%-ing this level is a lot of fun, there are a ton of side areas which aren’t even necessary to finish the level, all full of mini secrets. I actually managed to find enough coins for the coin warp on my first time, since I always try to explore everything I can, when I’m enjoying a level, which in this case I certainly was.

I don’t think there’s much more to add, it’s a tightly crafted fun level, which is definitely worth playing through.

It’s great to see some of these again after their image hosts took them down! Simply replying to the thread with these might have made sense, but I suppose there’s no guarantee whichever other image host might not go down in turn… J2O is the only site we can really rely on. Some fun images, ranging all the way from wild stuff to totally trivial now.

This is a review for just one of the levels in the pack, namely Ancient Abyss. I have nothing to say about any of the other levels at this time and because they’re not uploaded separately, there’s no better place to leave an individual level review.

Every once in a while I bring up how much I love Ancient Abyss, generally followed by weird looks from the audience and no acknowledgement. Hardly anybody remembers this level. It’s a weird experimental stage in Snooze’s level design career that could’ve only possibly made sense in 2008 and we’ve all since moved past it. Well, I haven’t. I remain forever impressed by what this level accomplishes.

The initial impression you get when you first see Ancient Abyss is that it’s a regular, simple CTF layout. A bit claustrophobic, with little room for premeditated combat maneuvers, and full of places to safely camp. Even at this point it’s easy to notice that the visuals are wild. There’s a clear disregard for the concept of tiling. The intended use of tiles is treated more as a suggestion than anything. Tiles are flipped and layered together to create complex abstract patterns. Does it look good? You could argue for either side. The sharp edges, or so-called tilebugs, might bother you, and it takes some imagination to see this as more than a mess. But I think it takes both courage and genius to attempt something like this on such a scale, and to me the result is impressive, interesting, and pleasing to look at, at least for the most part.

But that is not what’s really distinguishing about the level. What is, is the massive over-100-tile drops on either side of the level. Every time you take one of these, you spend about 5 seconds in freefall with nothing to do but look at the scenery quickly passing by. If you find these, fall down one of them, and you’re highly unimpressed, it’s hard to explain what’s so special about them, but let me try.

What you have to understand first is that making a multiplayer level doesn’t always have to be about making a level that facilitates competitive gameplay. Nobody will tell you this, but there’s no rule that a level must strive to actually play well. It can, and that’s great, but that’s only one direction of design. Deep down, all levels are art, and while most aim to be pop—easy to understand and wide in appeal—there’s plenty of room for exploration of other genres.

From a gameplay perspective, these 5-second drops seem like a terrible idea. Nobody reasonable would put them in a multiplayer level. No other level contains something like this. And that’s what makes them so great. Falling down one of these for the first time is a jarring, confusing experience, only amplified by the unusual changing scenery as you fall. You could never see it coming. It feels like finding a hole in the level geometry and dropping out of bounds, halfway expecting that your journey will end abruptly in the bottommost row of the level with no floor to stand on. The terrain looks even weirder and more foreign and it feels like you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, exploring the unknown. When has another CTF level ever offered you that experience?

Of course, the problem with this perception is that it is entirely personal. To you, these drops might be 100 tiles of wasted space with a regular old piece of layout at the bottom. I can’t possibly convince you that it’s more than that, just as I have no way to convince you that a piece of abstract art is worthwhile or a song that sounds like noise to you is a masterpiece, actually. All I can say is that the experience exploring this level mattered enough to make me write this review—years after seeing it for the first time! It felt fresh and different, and it stuck with me.

So is Ancient Abyss a good CTF level? Well, no. At least I don’t think so—I never managed to convince anyone to play it with me and I had little desire to do so myself. Even aside from what amounts to 5-second cutscenes you have to watch every time on the way to collect power-ups, it has 3 full carrots and 2 small ones, which has got to be way too many regardless of the player count, not to mention how easy to camp they all seem. It’s cramped, hard to navigate, and probably just not very fun to play.

But also, yes. It’s unique and catches you completely off guard, and offers an experience unlike any other CTF level, so long as your mind is open to something else than playing another regular game of CTF, and willing to see it as art and not another toy. It’s not a good idea executed poorly, it’s quite the opposite: this is an idea that never had a chance to work, executed incredibly well. I think that perhaps not everything has to be "good" in order to be good.

It’s a fine level if you like the kind of levels that Slaz makes. A bit claustrophobic and lacking in enemy variety though.

A commendable effort by the author. The theme is well realised with a creative combination of tilesets, and the layout, while being rather cramped in places is quite novel and offers a decent gameplay experience. Nitpick, but I’m not sure if the level needed 3 different weapons that shoot downwards; 2 would’ve been enough. Great level nonetheless!

Is this a vanilla, traditional level? Well, sort of, yes. Enemies are the most basic available—thematically, if not mechanically—it’s an official tileset with the standard music, there’s nothing wild about the background use. Slaz even sacrifices an entire background layer just to controlling the speeds of the textured background, rather than let a single line of scripting take care of it. There’s not a lot to describe on these fronts because yes, this is in fact how Carrotus (or Easter) tiles go together—though, to be clear, a very strong example of the form.

But sort of, at the same time, no, tradition is being bucked here. There’s a question that lived me with the whole time I went through the level: what are all these coins for? I got to the end of the level, beat the perfunctory boss battle, and still didn’t know. I had to go in a second time to discover that there was a coin warp I simply missed the first time. Even if you do better than me and manage to notice the warp right away, I think you’re still unlikely to have enough coins the first time you encounter it. Especially because you can’t really know in advance what the target number is.

So you go back and play the level again, this time maybe somehow doing enough exploring to collect all the coins. But why? What’s the reward? Nothing too much. The reward does speed things up a bit, but if you’re replaying the level, you’ve probably already beaten it. You don’t actually need the reward to beat it. You could make a completionist argument, sure, but is it possible—and bear me with me here—the goal of playing the video game is simply to have fun?

Because this makes a lot of things about the layout make sense. This level trusts completely that you want to collect goodies and find secrets. Sometimes you even have to find secrets to progress, unless there’s yet another alternate route that I missed that would work as an alternative. But also there are large areas that aren’t necessary at all. Sometimes because they’re alternate routes to the next stage in the journey, but sometimes large areas that don’t go anywhere, that just loop in on themselves and contain goodies and secrets and things. The goal of playing these sections is playing these sections.

And collecting coins in them, I guess.

Anyway, those were the thoughts going through my head, deprived of sleep as it is this weekend. I can’t promise they have anything to do with Slaz’s actual intent with this level, which has a lot to recommend it even if you don’t stop and get confused about the meaning of coins or whatever. Slaz’s levels tend to have lots of little microsecrets and these are in full force here: some are little holes in walls, some are in the floor, some are more complicated. But they tend to be signaled. There tends to be some visual sign "secret here! try to find it!" on the wall. It’s something I associate with Slaz a lot and it works well here.

In general, this level is filled with moment-to-moment stuff. You enter a new room and suddenly you could climb those eggs, you could go up that slope, you could stomp that block. At least one of those options will probably help you progress. There’s a whole lot of use of vertical space, including clever uses of springs, and even some swinging platforms that it’s actually worth paying attention to. There’s very little flat ground, there are not dull rooms where you walk to the right while shooting lizards, there are not moments where you purely turn your brain off because it takes no work to decide what to do next.

And in that regard, this is not a usual traditional level.