Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

A non-linear level with a funny little storyline using a recent tileset. Mainly traditional JJ2 gameplay with only slight variations of existing enemies and obstacles. Quite easy for the veteran player but fun to explore for anyone. Nice that the final 3 gifts have arrows pointing towards their location, really improves the flow for completionists!

The thing I like most about this level is that it feels like a good looking level made for all skill levels. it’s probably enjoyable for anyone to play. Something very suited for the holidays. Since I get that vibe of this level I also have some nitpicks and tips to make it a more enjoyable experience for everybody:

1. Most of the Rabbit messages were a bit strange or unfunny. I would refrain from using (inside) jokes that most people would not understand. I personally liked the informative messages the most by far. And this is my favourite text box in a SP level yet.

2. I’m not a fan of the mechanic that allows you to finish the level before getting all the packages. I really felt like I needed to get them all and that it outright felt like cheating not to do so. That said, It also took me 30 minutes just to find the last package. Others talked about an arrow, I agree this would be helpful. But I would also be fond of combining that with collecting all the packages. (and make the bottom segment easier for easier difficulties, see #4)

3. For me the UI for the package counter lacks a tiny bit of polishness. I didn’t expect it to be there. I didn’t notice the UI until i collected my sixth package. I think what would really help is if there was some sort of temporary icon/text flash whenever collecting a package, so you really notice that the counter goes up. Maybe a temporary text size or colour change would really help. Similar to how other games handle stat counters.

4. I’m pretty sure that jumping from tiny hook to hook in succession (mainly in the bottom area) is too hard for casual players and should not be part of Easy and perhaps Medium difficulty. Casual spaz players will definitely get stuck here. This isn’t really your fault since this is a trend that has been going on for decades now and with even the most respected SP packs (HH, Devres, etc) are brutal when it comes to these designs. Most leveldesigners tend to only look at difficulty with the amount of carrots or enemies given, but not take into account very difficult platforming obstacles (often combined punishing with pits/hurt events) where casual players are most likely to give up. As i’ve been watching a lot of casual random JJ2 streams it’s very easy to overestimate rabbit control and the intuitiveness of casual players, I’m talking about players that get stuck in TSF, yeah it really happens more than you think. Sure, as of now you don’t need that package to complete the level, but that’s also stealing completionists of their fun. Which is a shame, because I would really like to recommend this level to new players, and I think that’s almost possible, but with parts like these they will get frustrated over the whole experience.

5. Same thing goes for the package at position 10,77. I understood how to get there by buttstomping because of a hidden ice block, but I assure you that this visual queue is too hidden for a lot of players. Maybe collapse scenery is a better option here. Post review I also noticed the stomp scenery at 222,175 in MLLE, which is even more vague, definitely needs a better clue or nobody finds this.

6. Most secrets are cool, some are a little confusing. Overall I enjoy it more when you can see what you are collecting, but often in this level you have no idea what you are collecting. There is a secret at 246,147 with a carrot and a hor spring, but since I was full health i was completely confused as to what I’m missing out on. If there is a horizontal spring inside a wall and I don’t gain anything I immediatly think I should freeze the spring. I’ve had this a couple of times where I felt a bit dissapointed when I could run into a wall and only found something like 4 food pickups. Perhaps it’s because there is no coin warp. With coins it feels different because the game gives you a very clear audio queue and stat counter. 4 Coins in comparison feels a lot more exciting than 4 food. Maybe the best policy is to only put gems and coins behind foreground secrets for that reason, or script something that makes it more noticeable and exciting than it currently is.

7. The level is great for what it is but I also want to note it’s not a really ambitious. For me personally I would have also loved if the boss fight had a change of scenery like Treylina mentioned. Another downside for me is that the level itself also lacks memorable landmarks, which is an issue when running around a map collecting stuff. While searching for the last packages I often got lost in the maze. I can safely say that the change in scenery, caves and open area’s were not enough to really make sense of where I was and where I need to be. It maybe would have helped if paths were blocked off after collecting the needed package.

But even with these nitpicks I highly recommend checking out this level. It’s a fun festive level and very enjoyable for most players.

2022-01-08: A lot of feedback has been used to improve the upload, see the changelog. This is why i’m adjusting the rating a bit.

Cute level!

Alright, here we go…the somewhat devils advocate. I put N/A so people will read the text, not the number.

TL;DR: It’s a solid, expansive map with attractive visual flair, but don’t expect any boundary-pushing gameplay with spectacle. It’s mostly traditional (albeit trickier) gameplay with an extra coat of paint and context. And perhaps that’s your jam!

EDIT: This review is a bit outdated. Will update once I’ve played the new version.

The long version:

**WARNING: Spoilers below. **

_{Disconnected thought dump}

The NPC dialogue was silly (and somewhat cute at times). It added some life to the world.

The gameplay certainly fed my " Let’s explore the heck outta everything! " instincts on a first playthrough. I liked challenging myself how much I could defeat with blaster alone, though I did occasionally use other ammo for enemies in super tricky spots.

Nice to see this set finally used, and the extra Christmas aesthetics are a fun little flair. The water layer reflection also makes its debut in an actual level! I’m not sure if it would move at this temperature, but who cares this is a cartoon rabbit game.

Was hoping I could unlock more areas (maybe secrets) by freezing springs. I never really use ice in single player. Maybe there was but I wasn’t looking hard enough.

Those bastard tiny dragons blending in with the scenery…

The bossfight was…underwhelming. All that build-up. And then it’s just a bog standard xmas Bilsy fight and we come to an agreement after defeat.

_{Quality of life suggestions}

Minimap: Such a large, expansive map would benefit from telling you where you’ve already been, and where to go next. Maybe even hints for the next missing present? It’s not exactly fun when you’ve almost collected everything and you’re navigating for miles on end through dead enemies, just to find one or two missing collectables. coughs in Spyro flashbacks

OR an arrow that points to the next missing present, akin to treasure mode pointing to exits once you have enough. More simple and doesn’t really cover the already explored areas, but perhaps way easier to implement?

More checkpoints: While I never died, lesser seasoned players may do. For a giant level, it could be really cumbersome to die in some places. In that case, it’s probably better to put the boss checkpoint just after the hole to avoid the long falling sequence (maybe one slightly above the arena?).

Warpable checkpoints before you’ve collected the minimum amount. Because big map and collectable items, yadda yadda.

This is really minor, maybe a trigger scenery tile that changes in clear sight when you destroy the trigger crate? Would give players a clear idea what it does. I almost forgot myself…

_{Spectacle suggestions}

As you descend into hell, the surrounding environment would slowly transform into a firey hellscape, setting the mood and realization that something is off.

Give the Bilsy bossfight/arena more spice. Add fire hazards, floating platforms, bubba, idk. Maybe he could leave a temporary, hazardous trail of fire as he warps away, and he aggressively warps to your position? Or, maybe these ideas are better left for an extra phase, instead.

A tougher, extra boss phase would’ve give more experienced players an incentive to collect all presents (and the PU reward would still stay). This could delve more into the story, too. Who knows…maybe we could end up fighting Santa himself, mad about his dirty secret being revealed.

_Bugs!
You can get stuck between the tiles at 113, 104 and 163, 125 (in-game pos). Any other sections masked like this will have the same potential (so I won’t label them all unless asked). No big deal, debug or cheat mode will help and it takes a lot of fiddling to trigger it.

Super nice! This looks great and is fun to play. The non-linearity is done well, in that you don’t get lost too easily and come across the important parts of the level more or less naturally. There are some nice Christmas-themed custom events (I loved the falling Christmas balls) and there are small secrets everywhere which makes the level fun to explore. Overall it definitely has that holiday vibe and it’s nice to see that Jazz Jackrabbit games can still deliver that in 2023.

The (medium) difficulty felt just right too – you can’t just run around willy nilly, but it’s also not too challenging. There’s even a small story to the level which is nothing too special but nevertheless executed well.

This is a great level and you should play it!

Not much to say honestly, this is a damn near perfect level, with an insane size, gorgeous eye candy and level design crafted to near perfection.

The whole open ended nature of the level is greatly appealing to me, reminds me of Silent Night level made by Slaz. Here you need to collect gift packages instead of coins. Aided with a very soothing soundtrack to the level, makes for a great overall package.

My only complaint might be that for a level this big, some extra checkpoints would have been nice, other than that, this is a perfect level in my eyes.

Definite recommendation.

Replaying this, I still enjoyed fighting the Lori clones, the urge to search for gems, and the handy seekers & bouncers that got me out of dire situations. The level’s short and pretty straightforward, with little secrets but a few alternate paths leading to green/blue gems. The powerup is nice but makes the boss easier than it already is. DL this!

Very original! Enjoyed the level!

I liked the variety in the Lori enemies in terms of movement and weapons! Level design itself was cool too.

I kinda cheesed the boss(?), it kept spawning loris that jump in place that shoot rocks but I outranged them and simply stood still and kept shooting from afar.

This level is so Lori based and perfect!

9.2/10

Download Recommended

You have to appreciate a level that knows exactly what it wants to do, and then does it. Lori Fortress has you climbing up from the bottom of the level to the top, sometimes on thin platforms and sometimes in tight caves, optionally collecting a bunch of gems, but mostly dodging the bullets of enemy Loris who move in predictable patterns. That’s it. You couldn’t build an incredibly long level on this formula but it sure works at this length.

I do appreciate that Primpy has followed my lead in how to make a level: grab a bunch of art and/or gameplay mechanics from a totally different video game, stick them into JJ2, and call it art. And as long as something within those grabbed details is somewhat related to a contest theme, that counts. Here, charged with making something Lori-related, Primpy has placed a bunch of enemies using Lori graphics, because Cave Story(+) had a level where you fight some enemies based on its own blonde girl character. You play as Lori too, for extra measure… there are blink-and-you-miss-it dead bodies of Jazz and Spaz at the start of the level, which is kind of morbid, but hey they’re video game characters: they die all the dang time.

Although the level art is ripped directly from Cave Story(+) (and very cleanly done), and the boss behaves somewhat similarly, the level layout is thankfully all original. Gone is the (more memorable) initial part of Wind Fortress, where you try to navigate the bottom of the floating island using brief boost charges, which is very hard as a tiny robot but would probably be very easy as a copter-eared rabbit. Instead you’re climbing and dodging. The level goes back and forth between multilinear bits and bottlenecks, most notably toward the end when you have to find a trigger crate. The actual area with the trigger crate itself is very well done, a tiny loop that avoids excess backtracking and also clearly shows you what trigger crates do (open doors that look just like this). If you’re trying to explore to collect 100 gems you may get a little turned around, sometimes falling down and having to retrace some steps, but if you’re just focused on heading upwards at all times, you should have no trouble navigating.

The Lori enemies originated in my level “Fooball Field,” where they were but one obstacle among many, sparsely placed and usually quite easy to shoot without getting shot by. Here they become of a main event and, appropriately, are much harder to deal with, though rarely in a way that feels unfair. Lori’s kick becomes a good tool against the walking enemies to quickly take them down before they can turn around again. Bullet trajectories are more likely to get in your way instead of being warnings that you maybe shouldn’t go somewhere until killing the enemy. The ammo types provided are also well chosen, including ice: if you can freeze an enemy, the next hit does just enough damage to kill it outright. The boss is kind of a letdown, most of its difficulty coming from enemies sometimes being drawn behind it instead of in front of it, but hey, bosses are hard to make.

This is a level that cares a lot about (a very specific flavor of) gameplay and executes it well, with bonus Lori theming, and eyecandy that never gets in the way. Some of the gem locations are maybe a little too out of the way, but the gem system is entirely optional, so whatever. Nicely done.

I enjoyed playing this level, you had a pretty original idea, lots of Lori clones shooting various weapons. It was a bit difficult to finish it, in fact I died 4 times and I often fell off the platforms. Anyway I liked it a lot, you deserve a nice 8.5

I remember downloading this level when it had just appeared in J2O… That time it wasn’t worth playing, but seems that you had improved it.
I really like the idea of custom boss fights, but it would be much more enjoyable to resurrect some of unused bosses… For example, some of tilesets like Colon, Psych, Diam,Tube,Jungle were deprived of bosses in the original JJ2. It would be much cooler if you tried to make some of unused bosses with Angel Script and placed them into the planets that didn’t have a boss in original levels! I don’t even speak about Bilsy (If I’m not mistaken it was supposed to be situated in Jungle) which works well without Angel Script. If you manage to make something like that, I’d go mad with joy and give you 10.0.

Now what about this level.

Tileset
I liked the tileset you’ve used- it looks great, but maybe you should have used a recolored version of it, since there are plenty of its recolors in J2O.

Layout
I agree with Stijn, the level is too big to make the boss fight difficult enough. Firstly, I was a bit confused by a big unused area in the upper part of the level, however it’s probably just nitpicking, as this empty area doesn’t have any impact on anything… There are also some flipped spikes in the left side of the level, you could make them hurt the player by placing some event like bees at them. The area available for the running form of Devan is to small, so you can easily defeat him with not powered-up bouncers while staying in a safe place in the lower right corner of the arena. Maybe you should reduce the slope, so Devan would be able to reach that area. The respawning bee can be easily avoided (if you aren’t gonna break that TV-sets) as it’s situated far from the boss. Too much powerups and carrots… I don’t see any sence in them. Boss isn’t hard even without them. And finally, hard difficulty adds nothing.

Eyecandy
Yeah, I’ve seen those falling leaves. That’s fine. But why didn’t you use the trees, mountains and a lake in the background? The way you’ve made it the level shares the same problem with Haunted House: an empty background! Just a bare sky! However, I liked the use of flowers, shrooms, small trees, ect on the 4th layer, so it doesn’t look too dull. Looks like you have some sence of beauty!

In the conclusion I’d like to say that you’re not a bad level-maker, everything is tidy, good-looking, the secret with a shield isn’t too obvious, I wish you to believe in yourself and make some bigger single player levels someday.

Well, I’ve seen worse first levels, but this still isn’t all that interesting. The idea of making a boss arena isn’t a bad one, and as part of a larger level pack it would’ve been fine, but standalone this isn’t really worth downloading.

The problem with JJ2’s bosses is that they’re all fairly easy (except for Bilsy perhaps). Their AI isn’t good and easy to fool, especially in large areas where the player (who is way faster) can easily jump around and outrun the fumbling bosses. This level is fairly large, and gives the player several powerups. Coupled with Devan’s tedency to get stuck on slopes this makes it easy to pick his first form off from a distance, and simply jump around his immobile second form killing him with potshots here and there.

There is some added difficulty from a respawning bee in the lower right corner of the level, but it’s easy to avoid and therefore not much of a factor. More bees or a smaller areas would’ve made the boss fight a lot harder (though not necessarily more interesting).

The eyecandy is fairly basic, there are no tile bugs and the textured background works, but there’s not much more to see than this bare minimum. If the level is as small as this one, ceretainly it isn’t too difficult to add some more prettiness to it?

All in all not bad for a first level, but at the same time not worth downloading or playing. Keep it up, though! Such a start does hold some promise for what’s to come.

There are a few tilebugs, for example sometimes you can stand in the wall or you can’t jump on a spring, because there’s something over it that you can stand on.
Anyway, for a second map, it’s very good job! ;-)

[Review changed to quick review, see the review rules.

It was a kinda short map, the boss wasn’t a big of a deal, but not the easiest. The bee nest was a random thing that wasn’t necesary at all. It is a nice map for a first one.

It is a nice begginer map, even if it isn’t the best or close.

EDIT:
I see you’ve made some positive changes to the level. Generators are present now and have their respawn time set quite low, which works fine in such a small fast-paced level. Just remind yourself to set it higher if you ever build a bigger MP level. Next we have the much desired vertical space in the form of the upper platform and a big ‘chimney’ wall in the middle.

I generally like these changes, but my biggest concern lies with the chimney in the middle as it blocks off the entire path. Maybe try making an opening in it and/or in the upper platform? Death ends and linear movement can easely kill a CTF level.

Another (tiny) problem I found has to do with the PU’s in their enclosed areas on the upper left and right. Now that there’s a platform inbetween them, skilled players can use Bouncers to shoot the PU’s through the wall, making the coin warp obsolete. You may choose and keep it that way, or thicken the walls a bit to make coins absolutely necessary.

Also try and look at the tilebugs in the walls. I know the Holiday tileset can be a pain to do fully right, but this level has some masking problems that adds unnecessary gaps that players can stand on. Just enable the masking view in JCS’ editor window and make sure all walls are straight lines.

My original rating was a 4.0, and I believe the current changes are worth half a point extra. Keep up the good work and I’m sure it can get better!

Original review:
First things first, merry christmas and a happy new year! Now that that’s out of the way, let’s review this teeny weeny level.

The layout is as basic and simplistic as it can get. Well, it’s no ‘Best CTF Party Good Luck’ yet but you readers get the point (haha). One base on the left, one base on the right, the middle contains vines above spikes, a little secret passage, and that’s about it. I missed any form of vertical movement in this level.

Some things felt unexpected concerning tileset usage, especially the houses’ layer-3 usage and the choice of using the ?-block as a coin warp. There are also tilebugs in the ground and an overall lack of variety in available tiles (all spikes have their star animation, not all xmas light colors were used, etc).

Weapon choice is okay for a symmetrical level. Both sides have a weaker and a stronger weapon, and teams are used to switch sides after a round nowadays anyway.

Also, don’t forget to put in Generators in multiplayer levels for all events you’d like to respawn. This level is currently drastically broken due to the lack of them.

I give a 4 and can’t really recommend it in it’s current state. It’ll need some big changes before it reaches the amount of simplistic fun Mulch/Malch style maps do. Please don’t see this review as being too harsh, but take it as a way to improve the level! ;)

EDIT 30th April 2020 – I decided to lower my rating a bit as I don’t think it’s worth a 7 by my current standards, mostly for the reasons all the other reviews with similar ratings have stated, but I’m sure Primpy wouldn’t mind as he’s made way better levels in the meantime. A good level designer’s gotta have a humble beginning I suppose. :)

One awesome map.

[See above. ~cooba]

Well, if you call my map bad…
Your level has the same problems as mine. There’s a very big space to the left of the chamber, the wallpaper is repeating. All I can say.

[You should actually download and play the level before rating it, not just comment on its preview. Original rating: 6.0 ~Stijn]