Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

A decent level for a first attempt. The pits with random warps as a means to escape felt a bit strange. If it isn’t an instant-death pit, it’d be better to offer a more straightforward way to escape. Also on the subject of pits, the first part of the level has goodies placed below with little to no indication that it’s safe to go there. Then there’s some treetops that don’t make it very clear which parts are masked. A lot of the gameplay involves relatively long jumps across 1-tile wide platforms, too finicky for beginners and too basic and predictable for the JJ2 veteran. Aside from the platforming, most challenge comes from the flying enemies (both types of bee, butterfly, and dragonflies) and luckily the ammo placement to deal with them is alright. Scarce enough to not just keep firing, but enough to get the job done. There are no significant secrets aside from some partly obscured objects and a coin warp. Some crate stomping to unlock the exit and the level was over. Maybe a bit more variety, a more intuitive layout and more length can vastly improve it. But as I said earlier, it’s not bad for a first attempt, I’ve seen far worse (including my own first level).

2 Town based levels that mainly follow the original JJ2 level guidelines, but more polished. Relatively scarce ammo and just a few carrots makes for a fair challenge. There are secrets and goodies everywhere, an original bonus area if you get the coins, and interesting usage of springs and collapse scenery here and there. Old but recommended!

This pack technically consists of 4 levels but only the last 2 are interesting gameplay-wise. The first is a tiny prelude to the (silly) story and the second has a bit of gameplay but is over very quickly. The third one is where it really starts. You have to cross a jungle filled with traps while looking for a carpenter. These traps are a hit & miss across the pack, with some giving a fair challenge while others are more or less unavoidable unless you’ve seen them before, such as some sneaky rolling rocks. The animated tiles used as hazards, mostly in the form of retracting sticks, are hard to avoid and at one point they can even hurt you while retracted (inside a hollow tree trunk). It’s really trying to push the boundary of what vanilla JJ2 offers, and luckily that’s not all negatives. The lock puzzle in the fourth level consists of multiple small contraptions that you have to solve to un-obstruct the final pattern that you have to see and input in order to proceed, all done through trigger scenery ‘magic’ in a world before Plus.

All levels in this pack have these theater-like foreground decors. While I understand the reasoning behind it (The two primary sources of inspiration for this pack also did this), I felt like it was too visually obstructing for the sheer difficulty of these levels. Furthermore, it’s not always easy to spot what walls and floors are masked, and plenty of enemies (like bats) are fully or partially obscured by layer 3 tiles. All of this isn’t a huge problem as long as you continually remind yourself to traverse very slowly, and that this pack is more about small nifty obstacles instead of flowy run & gunning. There are, however, enough enemies to shoot along the way, but aside from a few of the monkeys they won’t pose a big threat. Collectibles like food are also plentiful, getting a sugar rush never felt more useful. The amount of carrots feels just right, with some of them placed in less straightforward places, making them very rewarding.

All in all a decently fun and unusual vanilla JJ2 experience. Its shortcomings are mostly technical, but so are its qualities, with the big puzzle near the end being the icing on the bittersweet cake. Download recommended, although the majority of the score is due to the fourth level that carries most of this pack’s quality.

An enjoyable non-linear level for the experienced player. Some creative enemy placement such as dragons in walls and lizards under vines. Sometimes it's a bit unclear what path a crate opens, and masking isn't always obvious. There's more ammo than you'll ever need, and the boss gave a decent challenge until you find out where to camp.

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!

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!

This level pack has the potential of becoming the Devres of the Plus era, and that’s not something to be taken lightly. Although there are some minor shenanigans that could be prevented in the next part (assuming there’ll be more) or with an update to this one.

The episode starts with a scrolling intro, where the story is so straightforward that it’s main purpose is to make fun of itself. This is surprisingly followed by a tutorial level that teaches the basics of Jazz’s moveset in a similar fashion to ‘Rabbit in Training’ in the original JJ2 campaign. While this tutorial arguably does a better job explaining the basics than the original, it’s incredibly weird to see it in an episode that quickly gets brutally hard compared to the original levels.

All the levels are carefully designed. Eyecandy is everywhere and its amount and placement always feels natural. Same goes for lighting in caves and the matching color schemes in the backgrounds. The levels are mostly designed around familiar JJ2 gameplay although there are some exceptions such as the floating rock ride in ‘River Ride or River Die’ and swimming with limited oxygen in ‘Swim For It!’.

Food and gems, while not serving any purpose due to the removal of Sugar Rush, are everywhere and fun to collect. Exploration is often rewarded with coins, which do serve a purpose as the coin warp near the end of each level is the only means of getting 1-ups! Carrots can be found often but not always on the straight path, sometimes a risky jump is necessary to get one. Ammo is relatively scarce but the levels are designed around its usage pretty well, just make sure to conserve it for those occasions.

Enemies are mostly placed where they form a fair challenge instead of just being cannon fodder. Except for the bats in the latter half of the pack, they’re often hard to notice and feel like a cheap trick that JCSers try to avoid nowadays. Oh, the ghosts in the temple section of ‘Swim For It!’ can be annoying as well, they’re invincible and eager to attack, unlike what a hint message near them says. What is lovable however, are the intuitive test-like Airboard sections spread across the levels.

Overall it’s a pack clearly aimed at the experienced JJ2 player. I highly recommend it if you believe you fall into that category. I played on Hard and enjoyed the extra health enemies had. Button mashing JJ1-style is so satisfying! The many things I enjoyed here really made up for the few frustrating design elements, and I’m a sucker for cheap humor so..

A pack of 8 levels tied together by a storyline.

The first level is centered around what looks like a sea of lava, produced cleverly by using a combination of foreground tiles, many hurt events, and some MCE toaster shots to cover the surface. Above the lava is a barrage of spikeballs and enemies on destructable blocks. Freezer ammo is there to make things easier, but with enough patience you can also shoot down the spikeballs.. The objective is to find an Invincibility carrot to walk through the lava without getting hurt, but since you have such a long invinciblity time already after getting hurt, you can also just cross it by force. You do need to get at least some coins so a bit of exploration is necessary. Anyway, checkpoints are aplenty and while the level starts off fairly hard, it becomes a lot easier near the 2nd half.

The 2nd level is very different. It has you infiltrating a facility ‘Mission Impossible’ style. Touching a guard or falling into a trap has you restart without losing a life, so exploration is very forgiving. Some areas are a bit cramped here and there, and the amount of ammo you can get through stashes is somewhat excessive. Also, the rat enemies really like hopping through the ceilings.

The 3rd level is gimmicky and centered around the frog morph.Tricks are used to allow you to navigate vertically, while Fencers are your main threat. There’s also a floating box near the end used as a platform.

The 4th level focuses on moving the water level in order to clear your path, but stays pretty linear aside from that. The boss is cleverly designed. Although many things have been done with the Robot boss before, this one combines it with a copter to force the player into danger below before the boss can be damaged.

The 5th level uses an original mashup tileset, and a ‘haah waaw’ photograph for the background. Still looks nice. The start pos has you on your toes as you need to shoot some blocks fast before your copters run out. The following objective is to disarm bombs placed in the many sewer parts of the level. While it lacks some of the clever designs of the earlier levels, it’s still fun to navigate.

The 6th level is disco themed and starts off in very cramped buildings where you’ll need to find unlocked doors to progress. Other than that it’s a very traditional JJ2 level. There’s apparently a Rocket Turtle somewhere near the end but it didn’t activate correctly in my run. This level is directly followed up by the final. A not so fun Devan boss in a cramped space with some minor enemies to help him out. Since there’s a huge ammo stash down below to make this fight easy, your biggest challenge will be trying to prevent Devan from hopping through the walls.

And finally, the tiny end credits level has another nice protograph for a background. For some reason, walking right doesn’t actually end the game for you. You’ll have to do that yourself. Sucks if you’re lazy.

Pack recommended for everyone seeking a moderately unique vanilla JJ2 experience. If you manage to get through the challenging first level, the rest of the pack won’t be a problem for you. Enemy and ammo placement is a bit annoying and excessive at times, but for the rest it’s a well designed pack glued together by a story that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

A big pack containing 10 levels, with 7 of them being christmas themed. They all offer traditional JJ2 gameplay, almost to the point of being an extension to the HH98 levels. The gameplay is, however, a bit more intuitive than that. The levels make good use of diagonal slopes and springs to make paths less linear. On the other hand, they also rely a lot on the old “find the crate to open up your path” design. There are many nooks & crannies that are missable so exploration pays off (usually in coins). There’s a ton of ammo with all gun types coming up throughout the levels, yet not that many turtles and lizards to back up that amount of firepower. Eyecandy is done very well, not overwhelming but the scenery is slightly more filled than the official levels.

In the end there’s a small haunted house level, probably the least special of the pack. The 2 secret levels make up for it though. Download recommended if you’re up for classic fun, but remember that the length of the pack could make it feel like a drag, especially if you’re used to modern AngelScript enhanced levels.

A challenging level where you battle against the the many wind events more than anything else. The carrots and savepoints make it forgiving enough. The aesthetics portray a blizzard excellently, and the module music is fitting and actually written for this level. The boss was interesting yet quite easy if you have the Toaster PU.

A traditional JJ2 level that uses MLLE just for aesthetic purposes. Enemies are Carrotus’ default turtles and lizards, as well as skeletons and ghosts to add to the ‘sinister’ atmosphere. The invisible walls don’t always make sense, and it’s not always clear which bushes can hurt you. Overall it’s basic gameplay but a very solid clean level design.

A mildly scripted, non-linear SP level where you have to collect keys & gems to unlock doors. You also need to morph into different kinds of animals with unique abilities in order to pass certain areas. This involves some backtracking and memorization of points of interest to revisit, so I’d say it’s indeed a metroidvania albeit in a fairly basic form.

As a rabbit you’ll have the ‘boomerang’ weapon from Jill which is pretty fun to use (in hard mode you have to find a weapon first!). There’s also a spikeball weapon to be found that shoots diagonally and can break rocks. There’s plenty of enemies, some from JJ1 an others are (mostly) reskinned JJ2 enemies that follow their standard JJ2 behavior. And if you hate the (small) bees, then prepare yourself because they’ll be your true nemesis in this level!

Instead of carrots and hearts you have a health bar. Eating 8 apples equals 1 heart, and apples are aplenty so there’s always an opportunity to recover from mistakes. It’s nice to have infinite lives and the animal morph ‘icons’ you touch act as checkpoints too. Hard mode can be challenging but with these additions it still makes a relaxing experience.

All the eyecandy, especially the foreground birds, can be a bit distracting at first. It’s not immediately clear if animals are enemies or part of eyecandy tiles. I suggest looking at Jaws’ old Amazon tileset first before playing this level. :P

I managed to glitch once by escaping the waterfall right from the key gem as a piranha (swim against the upper left tile), but other than that it was a smooth experience. Level recommended!

A short, relatively easy level mashing up Carrotus & Castle. Aside from some unusual tile choices it has nothing revolutionary, yet the flow is good enough to never feel dissatisfied either. There are some wall-hugging secrets that are decently hard to find. Download recommended, as long as you’re up for typical vanilla gameplay.

An interesting mashup of different JJ2 tilesets, with some christmassy details mixed in like snowmen portraits, christmas trees, and ehh toilets. There’s not much open space, mostly horizontal pathways, and an optional route that gets you the extra coins necessary for the warp. Plenty of enemy diversity too, fitting for a mashup. I recommend it!

Well over a year after Faded Story, a new SP from Lynx is finally here! While it appears to be a pack, it’s more or less a single level accompanied by a prologue, a bossfight, an ending, and a weirdo bonus thingy.

Anyway, the opening scene is done pretty well and introduces a brief but funny storyline about a monster escaping, using old fashioned foreground tiles to display the dialog. It also introduces snowflakes that you can try to collect for completion. The flakes don’t appear to serve an additional purpose other than ‘doing it all’.

The actual level is mostly vanilla but does focus on several scripted elements. Antigravity can be activated and deactivated by touching arrow signs and is essential to navigate the level. Beer is a custom food item that leaves you stoned (err, drunk) for a few seconds. Apparently the Jackrabbits are not used to drinking alcohol at all.

Ammo is the usual with Bouncers and Toasters being the most prominent. Enemies are Turtles, Bats, Ravens, and Hatters. With each of them being placed thoughtfully enough to pose a bit of a challenge. Sometimes backtracking is required to switch gravity or to get a Trigger Crate that couldn’t be stomped earlier with antigravity on.

I don’t like the floor/ceiling spikes that much. In a flash, they are pretty hard to distinguish from nearby tiles and I often got hit by the sides where I didn’t expect the mask to be. That said, the short spinning spikeboll section was a highlight. Overall, playing on Hard the level still felt fairly easy for the seasoned player, as I completed it with all snowflakes and the coin warp in less than half an hour.

The boss is mostly a sprite swap of a vanilla boss that only adds a barrage of smoke rings coming out of its top. You will understand why once you play it. Not a lot more challenging than the original boss but funny nonetheless.

Clearing the ending level will take you to a little bonus. A tiny level that has you fighting and collecting laundry (sprite swapped enemies & food). While funny, I survived the onslaught for several minutes and couldn’t find a way to clear it. That’d mean there’s no formal way to end the level other than getting a gameover which registers your score.

Anyway, it’s a very accessible, relatively newbie friendly, mildly scripted level that I recommend to everyone. Not the most original, but plenty of thoughtful level design is there.

While this level looks aesthetically modern and contains many scripted elements, this is still the most vanillish JJ2 level by Violet in a while due to the obvious theme of the contest it was made for. While having enough original quirks, the main course here is a pretty straightforward mostly linear level with a mild focus on exploration. Secrets are traditionally placed in walls and most of them are accesed a bit more intuitively than just by hugging every wall around them. There are also more open secret areas that can often be found by following the path not guided by arrow signs.

Gameplay mostly follows JJ2 standards, although there are a few platforming sections that take more precision by means such as chains of platforms appearing and disappearing one after another quickly. Hence why Violet decided to make these skippable by giving good old Coin Bunny a mere 10 coins. The carrot rockets are also a surprising addition, as well as the water slides. And while not by far among the hardest of JJ2 levels, this one is definitely more difficult than standard JJ2 and a slow & steady traverse is recommended above running & gunning around.

Enemies are mostly slight alterations of original JJ2 enemies, such as faster throwing Monkeys and Fencers standing on airboards so that they can cover more vertical space. There are also Devan and Devil Devan clones that behave like their regular boss variant but take only a few shots to kill. The most original enemies are the swarms of pesky pumpkins that can poison you, forcing you to look around for antidotes if you were unfortunate enough to touch one. Ammo is very balanced, with the more useful types such as Seekers and Toasters being relatively scarce. Most of the powerups and shields are placed within secret areas to make them feel rewarding. Bird cages are less secret yet placed very out of the way.

The only problem I encountered on my first run (on Hard) was that I somehow missed the airboard and jumped straight through the vine area assuming the large carrot platforms were meant to be long-jumped. That all went well until I got stuck below, got confused and died to get back up to the checkpoint. Maybe there is a way to clear it without the airboard but I don’t think it was meant to be.

And finally, the bossfight didn’t feel so special and recycled a bit of the Angelscript example level. It’s still better than ending such a beatifully crafted level without a bossfight. The typical J2C-style credits text near the end of the level got me by surprise though. I also liked how the player grading feature from Bunnylover was ported over, it encourages replayability a lot.

Download highly recommended as long as you enjoy SP levels!

This level manages to stay relatively true to a traditional JJ2 single player level while introducing plenty of new twists on top of it. There are the usual enemies (with a black coat of paint), coins and gems (ehh skulls) to collect, and crates to stomp in order to progress. On the other hand there are sticky swinging platforms on rails, black blobs a.k.a. void that hurts you, rewarding praying spots, bombs that make the ground act like a springcord, and more.

Overall the level design is linear with some secrets and small detours here and there. Not very difficult but enough challenge to keep you alert at all times. The environmental hazards are definitely going to hit you more than the enemies. Especially those blobs placed right above springs were tedious to avoid with proper timing.

The aesthetics stand out with visual props everywhere. The repetitive music is not really a problem since this level took me just a bit longer to complete than the original JJ2 levels.

I did experience some FPS drops to around 15 – 20 in a few places when a lot of void blobs were on the screen at once. Different computers and OSes perform better or worse, but it shows that scripted levels can be CPU heavy at times!

And at last, the boss is original in that it doesn’t have it’s head as the weak spot. Video games quickly make you learn that heads are what you’d hit for the biggest damage. Not here! It’s innovative and makes you use different parts of your brain to beat it. Also, it’s weak spot is also it’s safe spot at times.

Thanks for reading this drunk nighttime review, now go and play this!

This is not really a “deserted” Diamondus as it’s full of goodies and nice eyecandy everywhere. I like how the beginning has 2 separate pathways, adding some replay value. It’s also the first level where I saw a turtle shell fall through Destruct Scenery blocks, well that’s something lol. While it’s a fairly standard Diamondus level, the underwater race and little backtrack near the end felt original. Too bad ceiling spikes couldn’t work at the time this level was made, as this clearly wanted to utilize them.

I recommend playing this at least once. It’s better than reading reviews. :P

An early level by EvilMike, that clearly shows what was to come with Devres. Floating Suckers won’t like this level, as it popularized buttstomping them to reach new heights. It has plenty of other clever design elements for it’s time such as using TNT to get crates that are out of reach, proper usage of spiked platforms, and even requires an RF jump at one point. The Bolly Boss arena, utilizing spikes and hooks, was pretty good too. The part where you helicopter and Airboard through a path of spikeballs has an unfairly small gap, and at some point there’s a rat next to a vertical tube that will always hit you.

It also comes with a bonus level that’s pretty original, grabbing coins as you fall, althougth it’s rewards are mostly useless unless you want to play Mike’s earlier Diamondus level with extra guns.

I recommend this even in 2019 if you want to see what EvilMike was up to before the heights of Devres.

Just replayed this level after a long time, and I don’t think I ever took the time to finish it back then.

The difficulty isn’t that bad compared to todays SP standards, but some careful movement and planning is still advised due to the obscure enemy placement, especially the bats. Ammo is plentiful though, so using Seekers and Bouncers made things a breeze. Also, the level is Spaz only and those stacked Tuff Turtles are mere fodder to his sidekick!

I like how the start of the level is a tiny little hub where you need to open 2 crates, and the method to get the last coin is pretty well done. I found at least 2 little secrets in walls so there’s stuff to explore too.

There’s not a lot of negativity I can say about this level, other than the fact that it’s short and that the boss was surprisingly easy and not that well-made. I recommend this to kill a few minutes, but eventually the followup “Cave 2” is a big improvement.