Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I’ve never actually needed to use any of the tools included with this, but the information on JJ1’s file formats alone is invaluable – this is an essential collection of files if you want to do anything with JJ1 that’s not playing it or creating new levels (and even then it might still be useful)

An enjoyable level. The layout isn’t very special but it looks nice, and has a few scripted weapons that make for fun games. Maybe not suitable for duels or serious games, but definitely a good choice for a public server or a JDC event.

This is very nice. The small kangaroos are like a souped-up version of the Fencers, swapping that enemy’s defensive parries with offensive jumps that go surprisingly high and far. They’re not impossible to avoid, but will certainly present a greater challenge than most vanilla enemies, which is a point in their favour as far as I’m concerned. One complaint I do have is that whereas all original enemies have a simple looping idle animation, these kangaroos stand completely still while not attacking. Which is fair enough, as animations are a lot of work, but it does look a bit strange and makes it obvious that these are imported rather than vanilla enemies.

The boss is a bigger and badder version of the small kangaroos, adding extensible boxing gloves to simply jumping at you to attack. The boxing gloves are a nice idea but perhaps a little too hard to avoid, reaching high enough that they’re very hard to not touch even when double-jumping over the kangaroo. This would perhaps be worth balancing a bit more.

But overall this is a very useful addition to the game, giving single player level makers more tools to work with and adding some variety to JJ2’s by now stale palette of enemies.

The level itself is good, layout-wise nothing very much out of the ordinary but quite solid, reminiscent of larger symmetrical levels like Medieval Skyscrapers with a few twists of its own like the pits at the bottom and the shields. Visually it’s a bit uneven; the background looks amazing and much of the rest too but the floating space ships (?) in the middle look less appealing.

The big gimmick of this level is obviously its superweapon, the Redeemer; a remote-controlled high-damage missile of which both teams get one and that respawns very slowly. It’s hard to say what its impact in a “serious” game can be as it is something you’d need to build new strategies around – my hunch is that it may be a bit too hard to outrun for how easy it is to control but maybe a skilled player will be able to deal with it more effectively, especially given the protection shields give. Either way it’s an addition that will make this level a lot of fun to play in JDC events and the like; it’s big enough for large teams and the redeemer adds a fun dimension to any game played in the level, though for extra mayhem you may want to make it spawn more often.

Worth checking out at least for the Redeemer, and also because it’s just a solid CTF level. Great work!

This pack was okay. The premise of “an old school single player levelpack” is delivered well; everything is fairly “old school”, from the level design to the excuse plot to the music list.

The levels are mostly good old platforming with some trigger crate puzzles mixed in. Lots. Of. Trigger. Crates. Trigger puzzles can be okay and they’re pulled off well in a few situations in this pack but after the 5th or so crate exhaustion usually sets in and in these levels you’re at about the quarter-through point then. It’s not the biggest of problems, but it does make you wonder whether maybe leaving behind the old skool style and going for some more innovative puzzles instead might’ve been a good idea.

Perhaps repetition is this episode’s problem in a more general sense too; I found myself thinking of TSF’s Easter levels a few times, and then especially of those sections where you had to jump up a copypasted set of platforms that seemed to serve no other purpose than to make the level feel bigger. Now I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but things did feel a bit samey every now and then. It’s all perfectly serviceable, but not necessarily fun.

On the other hand there were many more enjoyable segments as well, with small detours that lead to bonuses and a lot of secrets. These did result in me having multiple powerups (including the Blaster powerup) halfway through though, which made the subsequent levels a lot less challenging than they would’ve been with sparser ammo. A more balanced distribution of weapons would’ve been better, though there’s few things as satisfying as having a fully powered-up blaster and running through the levels destroying everything in your path.

When it comes to visuals IJskonijn is an alumnus of the Spy school of design, where every layer is layer 4. Especially in the Jungle levels things look appealing at first sight but once you start moving everything becomes super confusing as platforms are used both as tangible objects and background scenery. This makes it quite difficult to see what parts of the level you can actually stand on. The other levels are a bit better in this regard, though some parts go off the other end of the scale and look fairly bland, with repeating patterns, and little eyecandy. A bit less of both (and fewer tile bugs) would’ve made for a nicer middle ground, but except for the more egregious parts the levels do look quite decent overall.

So what to make of this pack overall? As I said, it’s okay. It’s not bad by any means, and it’s an adequate diversion, but there was no moment during playing that I thought “wow, this is really cool” or anything like it. Good to download if you’re into single player and out of levels to play, but nothing out of the ordinary.

This level is easily recognizable as made by FireSword: lavish eyecandy, heavy on the conceptual side and with some interesting scripted effects. I found that it played fairly well, with a lot of fighting occuring in the lower corridors. On the one hand this was great, but due to the flatness of the level’s bottom area it was also easy for everyone to just run back and forth shooting with their blaster with no one really getting the chance to grab the dropped gems because everyone was constantly blinking.

There’s plenty of room to move around the rest of the level though, so if the fighting at the bottom gets too intense it’s always possible to roam around looking for potshots and gems people haven’t taken yet. There’s a fair amount of gems in the level and there’s a lot of useful ammo in the upper parts of the level as well which keeps things dynamic. The ammo selection is standard but seekers are relatively sparse but also really useful in the vertical parts of the level which makes them all the more desirable.

The level-ending warp is through a scripted portal in the middle of the level that looks rather spectacular, and puts you in a separate area where not much happens if you don’t have enough gems – in which case you just jump down back into the fight. The portal looks great and somehow even attracts players when they don’t have enough gems. The rest of the level is heavily decorated as well and makes ample use of Castle’s slides, which didn’t look that great, in my opinion; a matter of taste maybe, but I didn’t care much for it. There’s a couple of other areas which looked like tilebugs but might have been meant to look like that, knowing FireSword’s style. I guess I prefer a less experimental style.

Finally, the secret mentioned in the description involves walljumping for a bonus of 100 gems. I think it’s a really bad idea, games where people know of the secret will become “who will get there first” races instead of actual treasure hunts. Secrets are cool, but this one is a bit too big.

It’s things like that – the imbalanced secret, the somewhat-too-avant-garde eyecandy – that don’t really endear me to the level. It’s not bad by any means and will make for good games – and it has that spectacular portal – but there are better levels out there, and in this contest.

Great level, probably my favourite out of all contest entries.

There’s very little to criticize. The level is small and contains a good amount of gems and quite a bit of ammo too, which makes for action-packed games. There’s a clear division between the upper and lower half of the level, with the lower half seeing most of the action when I played it – this of course in part because it’s hard to dodge shots in water, and also because there’s a good amount of gems and ammo to be found.

The top of the level is easy to navigate and contains several pinball paddles which makes it possible to jump huge distances and be very mobile in general. If you’ve got about 6 players (as recommended by the author) games in this level become chaotic, full of action and a lot of fun.

The level looks great, too. Especially the upper half is well-decorated, with the eyecandy never going overboard but still making everything look great. The music fits the tileset and feel of the level really well and is a good choice here. My only criticism on this part would be that the bottom (underwater) area looks comparatively dull. This creates a good contrast between the upper and lower half, but some more decoration would perhaps have been nice.

Overall this is an excellent level that’s among the best Treasure levels out there and I’d certainly recommend hosting it whenever you’re running the game mode on your server.

AngelScript! Woo!

This level is huge, open, and without much of a flow – that is, there’s no obvious paths to take. You kind of just run around and jump from platform to platform (which is hell if you aren’t Spaz, by the way) and hope you bump into gems or other players. Complicating things is the pit at the bottom of the level, which luckily has a big gem-saving script attached to it (I wonder why you didn’t just use warps) so you don’t lose your gems upon dying.

Gems that fall down or towards the level’s side edges because people get shot will still be lost however, which is a major problem as the game goes on and may eventually make the game unwinnable. This is a serious problem that really should’ve been fixed.

Another scripted feature of the level is your blaster, which has only 25 bullets and needs reloading when these are depleted. Reloading requires standing still and waiting while your ammo count slowly increases. This is a nice idea that could work really well in treasure hunt (where you really don’t want to stand still). However 25 bullets is perhaps a bit too few and the short range of the blaster means that it becomes really hard to actually hit other people before you run out of bullets. It’s also impossible to reload while your ammo count is above zero. This often makes it smarter to just jump in the pit and get free bullets rather than waiting for the reload to finish.

Overall an okay-ish level with some innovative ideas, but it really could’ve used some more testing and thinking about the gameplay impact of the scripted features. A shame they weren’t implemented better, or this could’ve been a really interesting level.

I played this online today. It’s a nice level, but it’s so big! You’d need a lot of players to make this play well, as we were with about 6 people and I often went for minutes at a time without really interacting with other players.

The level looks really nice, though it’s a bit “bumpy” in its design – you don’t necessarily get stuck, but you’ll be jumping rather than running most of the time. This is of course in part due to the level’s vertical layout. On the one hand the many obstacles and the vertical gameplay make it hard to get away from others, on the other hand they also make it hard to actually shoot someone. The inclusion of TNT is a nice touch that has the opportunity to mitigate this.

As for the gems, I think the amount is just about right for the gem limit of 150 or more we played with. Things tended to get a bit eventless in the later stages of the game as most gems were gone from the level and people were hard to find due to the level’s size, but that might be different with larger numbers of players.

All in all a good level, but it’s kind of stuck in the “big JDC event levels” niche. Taking on a level of this size is commendable, but for casual treasure servers a smaller level would probably work better.

A large pack usually calls for a large review, but there isn’t anything especially interesting to say of this pack unfortunately. It’s not that it’s bad – it isn’t – but it’s jut a bit …generic. All levels are more or less the same: large, sparse eyecandy, LOTS of enemies, little challenge beyond avoiding the enemies.

Which isn’t especially hard either with Spaz’s karate kick, but many enemies respawn quickly and there are some parts where you have to avoid warps or time your jumps well. As such it happens that you’ve just cleared a platform and are then hurt or killed by an army of baddies spawning right on top of you. Not exactly ideal, but on the other hand they’re mostly placed on flat platforms with lots of space above them so in many cases the best solution is to simply jump over them.

As said, there’s nothing wrong with these levels – they’re just not very interesting to play. Some more variety would’ve done wonders – different tilesets, more puzzles, enemies placed in such a way that they’re harder to avoid. And maybe don’t set the “next level” setting of each level to “Data.j2d” ;)

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.

To be honest, this looks like a typical “my first level” that shouldn’t really have been uploaded here. Everyone starts out like this – trying out various way to build platforms and buildings with tilesets, maybe adding a few enemies to see how they work, no textured background because you don’t know how that works yet.

My first single player level probably looked similar. I’m glad I never uploaded it to this site, because it really wasn’t good, and maybe that should’ve happened to this one too: let it stay on your hard drive, learn from it, play some other highly-rated single player levels, take inspiration from those, and create your next level that is actually fun to play and looks good. Maybe ask a few friends to play the level and tell you what they think, so you can change it based on their feedback and make it better before putting it out there for others to download and review. I’m sure your next levels will be a lot better if you do it like that!

As it is, this one is really not playworthy, though.

I like this pack a lot. It’s just three levels with the default tilesets, but they’re big, fun to play and challenging.

The first level is fairly standard, much in the style of the official Castle levels. The tileset edit is nice enough, maybe the contrast is slightly too high but it looks good and adds a slight twist to the level. This goes for all three levels: large, with a nice palette edit and fun to play even though they don’t do anything spectacularly innovative.

All levels are full of secrets and diverging paths, which is great but sometimes a bit confusing: through the pack I got lost a few times looking for an exit in a dead-end area that didn’t actually have one. There’s almost always a way out that is fairly obvious once you finally find it, though.

I don’t really know what else to say; there’s nothing specific that stands out in these levels, but they do make for a good time playing them and finishing them feels rewarding due to the size and amount of secrets Bloody_Body put in them. I definitely recommend downloading this to all single player fans out there.

Well, that’s a flashback. The first level of this pack (that contains only text in Hungarian, so if there’s any story I’m afraid I didn’t quite get it) is an actual tutorial, much like the original game’s ‘Rabbit in Training’ level and, I’m afraid to say, equally dull. You can assume that anyone downloading levels from this site knows how the game plays, making tutorial levels fairly superficial.

Anyway, on to the actual levels. The first two are perfectly okay and do reach the goal of a making a “remake” of the original episode: they’re very reminiscent of Epic’s style, but a little bit bigger. The difficulty is also slightly higher and the levels are less linear than the original – that is, they are linear, but you’re getting warped all over the place so it’s hard to get an idea of where you are in the level.

The third level starts with a puzzle area that I didn’t care much for. There’s a lot of “okay, where am I supposed to go now?” which isn’t necessarily bad but since there are respawning enemies in the area you can’t easily jump around trying to find the hidden tunnel or trigger zone, but need to be on your toes not to bump in the same enemy all the time, which makes the whole process fairly tedious. There’s also an area later in the level where you get warped to random places by warps you can’t possible see before running into them, giving the whole puzzle a really random feel which gets annoying fast. The boss fight that follows isn’t much different from the original castle boss fight and as such not very interesting.

Overall a decent episode, but with parts that got annoying/tedious due to overzealous use of respawning enemies and warps. Always make the player feel like they’re the one in control!

Download recommended if you’d like a more challenging interpretation of the original Epic style levels.

The title of these levels suggests that the gameplay is inspired by the Flappy Bird games. And indeed the first 10 seconds or so involve the player manoeuvring between pipes like in that game, but fortunately the gameplay similarities end there and the rest of this pack is more of a standard Jazz Jackrabbit 2 single player experience, albeit in levels made with tilesets inspired by Flappy Bird’s graphics.

When I say “standard” I mean to say that the levels play out much like the official Jazz Jackrabbit 2 levels: lots of easily-killed enemies, coin warps, some jumping and trigger puzzles, useless pickups (what have diamonds ever done for me?) and lots of blocks to destroy. It’s good enough in what it does; things never get challenging and level design could’ve been a bit more creative but the levels are perfectly functional as a short casual diversion. The final boss even changes things up a bit by hiding a Schwarzenguard in a giant Flappy Bird which you then have to kill with electroblasters only. It’s things like that that make a level interesting and I’d have liked to have seen a bit more of that kind of creativity.

Sadly there’s not much else of that and coupled with the rather dull tilesets (Flappy Bird doesn’t have much in the way of graphics to steal of course, but that’s not much of an excuse) this pack is fairly forgettable. Not bad by any means, just not very interesting either. But I think with a bit of added creativity Ande300 could certainly make some interesting things in the future.

All in all this is not brilliant, but not bad either. Download if you want to have a bit of casual single player fun, but there are better levels out there.

“joystick” is “speelstang” in Afrikaans? This is wonderful…

No Way Out is a really nice level, and a nice showcase of some of the new possibilities AngelScript brings to JJ2. I liked the open-ended gameplay and not-too-easy-not-too-hard difficulty, it made for a relaxed experience (also thanks to the excellent music choice and decent eyecandy).

River Secrets is pretty terrible, and has so many glitches it’s practically unplayable (I somehow managed to both die and reach the next episode at the same time, only a few tiles from the start position).

So all in all it’s pretty hard to rate this level pack, since it’s basically one good and one bad level. I’m just going to mostly ignore River Secrets, and give this a 7.5 for No Way Out, which is definitely worth playing.

Heh, I played the original Team Battle endlessly back in the days, but never realized it was based on battle1. Nice idea to remake it.

Well yeah, as StarLORD says it’s certainly the best program put on J2O today so far, but frankly that doesn’t say much since it’s 11:15 AM at the moment and utility uploads are typically rare. I therefore doubt that this achievement alone is enough to warrant a 10.0 rating and suggest you look at the application’s actual qualities instead, which are:

- It does what it says on the tin

That’s pretty much all of it; open a tileset with the program and it shows you the tileset’s image, much like J2O’s file preview feature. Sfaizst’s effort however uses black as a transparent color (black is what’s used internally in the tileset file) instead of the purple-blue that everyone’s used to because it’s what JCS uses. While the one color isn’t inherently better than the other it’s always a wise idea to stick to what people are used to if there is no particular reason not to do so.

I imagine the typical use of this utility would be quickly checking out a tileset from inside Windows Explorer. That can certainly be useful and the utility eliminates the tedious work of opening up JCS, scrolling down the tileset list, looking for the correct set (which can be rather hard when you have a few hundred sets) and loading it.

That’s pretty much where the feature list stops though as once you’ve opened a tileset with the program not much can be done with it. You can’t view the masks, export the tileset image or do stuff with the palette. So while this app does do what it promises to do, it doesn’t do anything else apart from that, limiting its use. Still worth a download if you have a large set of tilesets you’d like to check.

(Honestly, I mostly wrote this review to balance out StarLORD’s ridiculous 10. A shorter version would’ve been “what Violet said”)

Don’t use such dark tilesets for multiplayer levels, it totally ruins it (unless it’s part of the concept)