Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Cool stuff, short and sweet, felt like 2004 again. I used a few cheats though.

Probably the single best way to mark the 30th anniversary of Jazz (however incidental), Marbel Prize is a delicious piece of vanilla Jazz.

I was going to say "little piece", but this level is considerably bigger than the original levels – with multiple discrete sections (marked by checkpoints), optional areas, and a lot of diverse and rewarding secrets. It took me a few attempts to get to 100% items, and that's not counting the "super secret" I ran out of time for. All of which is on brand with Marbelara as we know it, but on a bigger scale and more polish.

As mentioned by minmay, the enemy placement is pretty insidious, and this level is much tougher on ammo than JJ1 generally tends to be. It's not terribly hard – which is pretty rare as far as Violet levels go – but expect above average difficulty.

Overall, really rather quite good, maybe not brilliant, but more than worth the 10-15 minutes.

I had been replaying some older Violet levels this summer and noticed that there is a gap between her SP and MP works – in that the former usually go pretty wild with tileset combinations, while the latter tend to pull their punches in this department. This level in particular, though, does not disappoint.

Although Violet remains careful and prioritises player visibility, the eyecandy in bllib is visibly more diverse – eclectic even, considering those poor disturbed Diamondus trees – than in blcon, even though the latter features 400% more textured backgrounds. The music does a lot of the heavy lifting as well, but the overall impression left by Blood Libel is one of vague, but intense discomfort and dread. And with that eyebrow rising title? Playing this level hits different this week than the last, for reasons I should not elaborate upon.

This is by far the most interesting layout from all the contest entries, built with, and around, one specific gimmick in mind. Navigation is easy, and means of climbing upwards are plentiful, with one direction but many possible paths. Violet is weaving new cloth with familiar threads here – in addition to everything listed in the download description, a seasoned JDC player will be reminded of Ascendance Cliff, Tower of Death, but also The Fingers of Icarus, and even Penelope and/or Falkenstein: The New Order. If the opening post of the contest thread was written specifically to entice Violet, should I be surprised that Violet’s entry seems to be created specifically to entice me, as an easily flattered level designer? Who could possibly tell.

Across all the entries for the Halloween contest, this one is my favorite, and is therefore declared the winner.

Bonus points: The Spike Bomb looks really good in blue.

Such a pleasant surprise to receive another Heroes 3 themed level from SJ! I have to admit that this one leaves me a little underwhelmed, unfortunately, since I’m so used to the original Necro town being very dark and gloomy, while this level settles for rather standard usage of Blade’s Fortress tileset. The little extras – the Tomb Rabbit coffins AND mummies especially – are nice, but I think the additions from Castle and Inferno (funnily enough, both of those are also Heroes 3 towns) clash with the “main” artwork a little, and the background, though multilayered, is a little flat. Would have been nice to see some more layers with more creature dwellings.

SJ claims that the original CTF layout has mostly been replaced, but this level still feels like a CTF to me – the middle is symmetrical and the side areas feel like they’re missing a CTF base each. What’s there is kind of interesting, but also feels like a lot of platforms floating mid-air. I do always say that it doesn’t take much to make a Battle level fun – and this level was fun – but this feels a little purposeless. I don’t think there is a single good use case for the Nail Gun in this level – a weapon specifically designed for vertical climbing – aside from the theme.

Not my favorite, but still enjoyable.

Bonus points: In 1.23, what should be a Pacman Ghost in the background is replaced with Sparks, which looks really funny to me.

In what is probably the grandest scripting tour de force since BL18, minmay delivers on her own contributions to JJ2+ and allows the selected music track to wholly control every aspect of the level. The background nebulas glow dramatically, the very ground subtly shifts from grayish brown to purple and back, the candles will suddenly come alive upon hearing brass notes – all to the rhythm, ebb, and flow of A Bard's Tale, a module that would already have been a winner in a regular level. This level is an audiovisual experience like none that came before

It is also an experience that is feels very <i>bespoke</i> – with a flashy makeover for the Blaster, two brand new weapons, a new mechanic to collect (at least one of) them, a Sugar Rush alternative that is more like an ult move, and a very precise layout built specifically to accomodate all of the above, this level feels like a brief window to a modern video game, much different than JJ2. It’s impressive on multiple levels.

I do worry, though, that minmay went a little too far with fun over safety – all the weapons fire rapidly, are very highly kinetic, and cap off at 100 rather than the usual 50 – which was just fine with the number of people I played this in, but I imagine will quickly descend into bullet nonsense that would surpass even BlurredD’s Quick Death Valley. Which, I suppose, is the entire point of the level, but not my personal preference. And while I would be hypocritical to complain about a level that can be both CTF and Battle, the nonchalant non-symmetry of the layout suggest that the Battle version was a bit of an afterthought. It remains a spectacularly designed afterthought, however.

Bonus points: Really appreciate the crazy amounts of SPRITE::MAPPING used here.

Coated in that autumnal vibe of "dusk by 4PM", Pumpkin Park is yet another piece of evidence of how Dragusela has mastered the use of color in his levels. What would otherwise be a rather scattershot of tileset styles (JJ1, JJ2, and Blade) is brought together by the hushed purple and brown midtones to coexist harmoniously – combined with the quite lowkey background music, this level paints a very pleasing picture to look at.

With 2 carrots of a moderate respawn time, and a size I would describe as medium, this level seems to be aiming to be a duel level. But some design decisions become questionable if so – this layout is pretty open, and the carrots are not very far apart, so the first player to get the seeker powerup (hidden in a… candy warp, which is cute, but also pretty oldschool in gameplay terms) could probably dominate the game. And if it's not a duel level – why only 2 carrots?

This entry also lacks a little polish. The FPS, though improved, still errs on the lower side for me, the coin reskins are nice, but with the old sound effect and coin sprite in the HUD they feel unpolished, the title text stolen from The World Spear completely unnecessary and unoriginal, one of the hooks actually uses the Hook event (wtf?), the "final" version uploaded to J2O has no next level setting and still prints AngelScript warnings… combine this with the rather generic layout, and this level comes off as something that maybe needed a bit more time in the oven. (Says the guy who put a deadline on this level in the first place.)

Overall, a very nice looking level, that will probably play well enough – but not something I'd call outstanding.

Bonus points: The purple cityscape in the background is really tickling my TSF nostalgia bones, even if that may not have been intentional.

An admirable amount of effort – sadly it probably took tenfold more time to convert these to JJ2 than it took Game Titan to make these levels in the first place. They aren't really suitable for JJ2's fast multiplayer gameplay on account of being very small and barely having any pickups – perhaps with some extensive mutator work this could be interesting.

As mentioned in the description, the tilesets are not reusable because of JJA's tile size. Whatever artwork Game Titan had not stolen from JJ2 is also pretty poor.

It's nice to have this available as an interesting curiosity – very similar to the 3DBattle levels ( https://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/175/3d-battle-pack/ ) in fact – but a curiosity at most.

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

It’s called Turtemple

Looks nice but gameplay is nonexistent. Don’t do things like carrots next to two seeker ammo crates, the player with the powerup will stay there forever and win. This is especially bad in this map because it’s literally the only room in this map.

Unless I missed something you are not currently a member of XLM. Please reupload this with the filenames changed.

They’re quite dated now, but I’ve always liked them, so there’s that nostalgia factor.

(The dude in the thread was probably loading Techno Terror with a different version of the tileset that had the same filename, because Blade did that sometimes)

Aliens have invaded Earth

I’ve only properly played through the first three so far, but I am very impressed, especially by level 2 which I thought really captured the spirit of the original HH98 levels and built upon it, using the 20 years of JCS history that followed.

Very small maps with very annoying layouts and bad remixes. I don’t think this pack took longer to make than an hour total.

10 years later, we’ve gone full circle.

Well designed, but those terrible recolors of Medvio and Waz18 are just unacceptable.

It’s a rather nice level, as vanilla as it gets but still competently made. It felt almost like a secret level from the official episode 4 (exiting to Hell2 made this feeling stronger), but one that made better use of the ideas in Hell1.

I wasn’t too crazy about some things, like needing to find every single coin for the bonus warp, some blind falls onto spikes, and some eyecandy errors, but I enjoyed it anyway. And I have to give you props for using Inferno!

This one is still really cool.

I have nothing but love for this tileset.