Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I think this level deserves a higher rating. It does a lot of things better than most tests available. The design is great, even if at the core it is not a perfect first time experience.

What seems difficult for any test designer is to make the difficulty fair. This test also introduces a completely new mechanic, that does not feel like regular jj2 at all. You have to also keep in mind that as a creator you get to practise it a million times while making the test and mechanics, so by the end you need to judge the difficulty through the perspective of new players learning. Assessing that situation can be difficult, sometimes impossible to please everyone.

As a newcomer to this test while being fully experienced in jj2, be ready that this is a test where your jj2 knowledge and muscle memory will not give you much, and your first completion might take several hours, while your 5th completion can be in a matter of minutes. I will not lie that my first run was quite frustrating. But this also proves a point that while it is new, it is quite consistent and not the most precise thing ever, not in comparison to jj2 movement. It just takes a lot of practise. Your first attempt failing is your lack of experience.

However, if frustration hits new player experience, does that matter? Is this a fair difficulty spike? JJ2 basic movement is very difficult to learn in itself, especially when it comes to high precision for tests. There are still tests out there for vanilla movement that are way more fit for masochists than this test, but the fact that people maybe put thousands of hours in jj2 makes taking the next steps a bit lighter. Keep in mind that for a new jj2 player 99/100 tests are completely miserable. But if we assess the test after practising, you can bet that Switcheroo is not more difficult than the most difficult vanilla tests, and this shows with how reliably I can set records in Switcheoro while still getting stuck in jj2 movement tests after thousands of hours.

So it is not that Switcheroo is inherently bad, but it will feel unnatural at first. And not only that, it feels mostly the opposite to jj2. Many jj2 controls are normally quite floaty and have delays. Switcheroo has character switches on frame 1 inputs, this clashes a bit with what JJ2 is and might feels conflicting.

So I would say what does not feel perfect about Switcheroo core design is that what it asks you to improve better each level in big leaps. But I also understand the creator wants this concept to kind of have a beginner and an endgame in one level, while also not making it too long. To have an entirely new concept in a level means that the difficulty will ramp up, and for any tests these can be frustrating roadblocks to get stuck. Which is frustrating for any tests. I think this is also a design roadblock. There is just no way to introduce such a new and opposite mechanic, fit for one level, that is both beginner friendly and poses a challenge for endgame aswell. Maybe some kind of New game+ mechanic where it unlocks more difficult levels after finishing it feels more rewarding, but that is not how tests are inherently work either. There is no solution.

Besides this core flaw, Purplejazz (the creator) did everything I think to make sure the test would be appealing regardless. There is definitely a lot of deliberate design here to ease the pain a bit. It looks visually cool, it has nice music, levels follow a clear pattern and even if you get stuck there is help tips so you know what to do. The switching is very difficult but always responsive, the new UI is very clear. During testing, Purplejazz recognized that he had a lot of practise and levels may be too hard, so basically levels were made to be easier just to fit to streamline the experience. The test does not go on endlessly with too many levels. This has less than 25 levels, so you can not stuck in a level 40 out of 50. Meaning you can still somewhat back out and not get too invested.

Personally, I also want to emphasize that whether tests are puzzles or just pure practise is a design choice, so I hope everyone recognizes this. Personally, I am more a fan of just practising levels than having to solve them first. I think this is very subjective so I was not going to rate on this anyway, but it is still worth mentioning it is a deliberate design choice.

In conclusion, I think the difficulty in this test spikes quite hard around midway through. Beating the first levels is not guarantee you can beat this whole test. You might get stuck halfway. Yes, this test is hard. Getting overwhelmed in difficult tests and having to give up is true for almost any test by nature. Yes, this can be quite discouraging, but difficulty ramp is a necessary evil to fit an entire concept into one level and to give replayability (because the last levels will remain a challenge). The creator obviously wanted to make a full experience out of this concept in a single level. Most of the challenges in this test are inherently spending a lot of time learning a complete new subset of physics. Most of the reason I am not giving this a 9 or higher is because maybe the idea itself is just a bit too much and not very fit for an accessible one level experience, but I can assure you that with these parameters set, almost nothing lacks in execution. I think the creator pushed it as far as he could. And there is obviously a great deal of deliberate and smart design decisions. Switcheroo is a level with own identity, for better or worse.

Fun level without any glaring issues, albeit not particulairly refreshing. It is a small size without any camp spots, so this fits perfectly in the modern CTF era where it is easy to learn and play in for all skill levels. And due to the player base size being small and skill gaps being big, appealing to the audience is probably for the best. However it does start to feel like some levels tend to follow the same formula and lose a bit of identity. It feels very similar to Erathia and Land of the Snooze in gameplay style, but smaller. Visually, it feels very similar to other xlm products that use carrotus, such as levels by Dragusela and Loon. Personally, I like levels where it is a bit more difficult to hunt and tries new things, but it is still a nice level.

This level has pu bouncer and the roller, two very potent weapons from high ground. In my experience playing this in the tournament, the lower area in this level never ever feels safe against those weapons. On top of this, the carrots are locked in place and pretty high up in the level, which makes taking high ground even more favorable. Especially in this level I would have liked seeing shootable carrots to create some more dynamic staying below. The weapon choices and fixated carrots make this level a bit too top-area focused and in the open. It feels difficult to ever feel an ounce of control in this level.

A final thing I noticed is the amount of tiny masks get in the way of those powerful weapon choices, sometimes bouncers and rollers just hit the most awkward masks, making their trajectory quite unreliable when a player tries to climb back to the high ground.

However this critisicm does not take away that this is a well produced level and overall still better than most CTF levels out there. And it definitely deserves to be played from time to time.

These were played in a JDC event. Most of these levels feel claustrophobic and lacking of goodies. If the ammo and carrot placement was a bit better it would have been more interesting. Of course keep in mind these levels are from a different time, but now they lack a bit compared to more modern levels.

These levels are nostalgic but also feel dated now compared to more modern levels.

Fun level idea and awesome boost to the frog and bird characters by script. Coming back to this, I do think the level itself could have done more to make the gameplay around these characters a bit more interesting.

Didn't age too well, mainly campy. Despite some nostalgia, modern levels just play a lot better nowadays.

Lockjaw is a really ambitious level featuring a lot of cool customization. Going of the level alone, I quite liked it, but I think there are a few design traps here that more seasoned MP level creators don't go for. The following is also a bit subjective of course and is mostly feedback on things that could have been better. The level is nice.
- Slightly too much (colorful) eyecandy; The mixture of tilesets and colours don't always blend well together and it makes it hard for in an MP game to see what is happening
- Getting lost, landmarks and level cohesion; The level has a lot of areas where you have to curve around like a maze or no visual landmark. You can see the lava going down, but there's not a lot of vertical scrolling in the background, from left to right there's a lot of obstacles, and there's multiple stacks of similar looking paths (like stacks of castle bridges). In a lot of modern levels it's a bit easier to grasp where you are in the level, and have more defined landmarks.
- Gimmicks and visual clearance; This is a bit more subjective but when introducing new mechanics it does somewhat raise the question whether it adds or substracts from MP gameplay. While the Lockjaw trap in the centre is nice, there's not a lot of visual queue when it's about to happen, that the jaw itself is hurtful, by placing a couple of non-hurtful damn tiles in a specific pattern, is not the clearest way to communicate it, also players might have to search a while on how to activate them. Activating the jaw with the panels is also a dead end for whoever does it, which raises the question if it's worth camping over that spot for the slim chance someone is going to show up. I also think it could have played a more prominent part of the level. Right now, it seems easier to just avoid hte lockjaw entirely, both in getting the goodies or standing in dead end to activate it.

Fun idea to play around for a little bit. Some parts are surprisingly really accurate, at other parts I question how you remember it the way it's implemented here. I hope this gets finished though. It could be a fun SP mutator for plus 7.0

It's an okay level. It plays okay because small open arena's tend to work well in MP, but there it is also a bit generic. Both in level design and tileset use it's quite basic, but there aren't any glaring issues either. While it doesn't have any major ideas, it's fun for a few games.

Cool stuff! But F8 is also used to hide/unhide player names. Not sure if that is the most ideal hotkey.

Now obsolete because of MLLE (Multi-Layered Level Editor). It was always a bit of a hassle to use aswell because there was no UI.

One of the more visually memorable Castle levels out there.The layout is really cool and the level plays well, or atleast plays well the intended way. The pit at the bottom and the goodies there make it a nice risk and reward to go around. This level has a coin warp and coins that usually require you to leave the high ground, which makes for a nice gameplay loop. While this level does not have many landmarks, it still has different style of areas that do just about enough to not get lost as a first time player. The only real downside is that the level has a heavy focus around the center coin warp and the top right powerup where the warp takes you. Perhaps it's an upside if you like grieving your opponents. The coin warp itself is really cheap for a firebird powerup, which is massively OP and uncounterable. It decimates all your opponents in seconds, and it's hard to run out because you get 50 ammo. On top of this the best strategy is to just camp in the top right and abuse an exploit / bug to electroblaster the powerup constantly. While fun for a while, it kind of taints what the level has to offer overall and hurts itself for a serious competition. Regardless, it's a nice level.

While it's not the most groundbreaking level, it's still very solid and adds to the modern levels of jj2+. This is professionally made on all levels. It shows again that Loon is a seasoned levelmaking veteran.

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It's good to have Snooze back. The idea is really creative. The background contrast and brightness is colorful and bright and bring a different kind of eyecandy that still resembles Snooze his style that is clearly authentic and different to other levelmakers. I've missed seeing levels like this.

Some small polishing tips: There is still some masking issues still existing in the chunks 22,31 and 15,38 and a mask specifically at 45,55 this is a really fun level. And on a sidenote the wobbly sucker tube can be made 'unwobbly' with the use of noclip sucker tubes on the left and right.

This needs to be higher on the rating list. The most fun gamemode mutator.

x_xx.j2l is missing?

Astral Witchcraft is an unique multiplayer map that combines visuals and audio like never before with a fresh tileset and new weapons. It's a scripting marvel showcasing the power of SPRITE::MAPPING. Every levelmaker can learn from this in the future.This level does so many new things, that it's a real risk taker. I'm very appreciative of level designers trying new things, however taking risks can go both ways. Other reviewers have covered the basis of the level already, I'll try to go into detail of each level aspect to provide some good feedback on what I liked or didn't like about it.

To start of with what I really liked about this level:
The jungle 2.0 leaves are a great addition to the tileset. Not just for the tiles themselfs, but also the way Minmay utilized them. The way the thin leaves curve around the bricks is really clever and I can't deny I'm a little jealous not thinking of that myself. I wonder what the inspiration for this was. Together with the writings on the walls, drifting objects, potions, particles and background it sets the tone of the level immediatly. The map has clear landmarks for an open area at top, a middle area and a basement area. It's easy to learn and to move around in. Also I can't forget to mention the background colour shifts are amazing. This level is the reason why generalized mapping functions for scripting are rising on everybodys wishlist. Overall it feels great how alive this level feels.

Things I liked less about the level:
While this level is a visual marvel, it also pushes the boundaries a little too far sometimes. I think a little bit 'less is more' on the visual effects could have been applied here. The flashing foreground (during the bridge part of the music) hurt my eyes. The floating tiles I was talking about earlier, are also screen filled in a 1 -to-1 tile proximity which I can only describe as spilling a bowl of rice on my monitor. A small last nitpick about the visuals is that the tree branches from Agama Swamp feel a little bit tacky due to the artstyle and vibrant colouring, but I give this a pass because it's very difficult to find and match those tiles. I couldn't think of any better replacement myself.

The level limits itself to 3 weapons, one of which looks and plays like a blaster resprite and 2 other special weapons which can be collected at the centre of the level. They look great, they sound great, they play not-so-great. The novelty of them also quickly falls off when realising they are both incredibly powerful and easily collectible, way more powerful than any existing JJ2 weapon. This not saying the balance of jj2 weapons hold some golden standard, but the nuances of the gameplay are missing. Other reviewers have mentioned the level layout is build around the weapons, but this isn't necessarily a good thing when this allows the bullets to fly everywhere with extra area denial. The distance of the bullets is so high that it constantly hits atleast 3 screenlengths away. While playing with many players in the server it felt chaotic and like my actions were meaningless. My whole tactic in this level became camping and being afraid to ever make sudden movements. Any agressive movement is a death sentence for some of the bullets coming at you at mach 8 speed. This in addition to being limited to 3 weapons becomes stale quickly. You win by sticking to the ground as much as possible, because there is no weapon like bouncer that covers below you.

So overall: The scripted visuals are revolutionairy for jj2 and I hope to see them more often. I liked the eyecandy implemented here for the most part. The gameplay felt refreshing, but only for a very short while.

Spyros Battleships CTF is exactly what you would expect. It is a CTF that is in the style of JJ1 Battleships. Visually it doesn't do anything groundbreaking, but the gameplay is alright. It's nice to be able to see the outside of the ship, although some areas feel slightly ambigious. It looks like you can go outside the ship for a playable area, but it's actually out of bounds. The level is flat and small, which works nicely for fast action packed games in small multiplayer lobbies. The bottom right seems to be a loose dead end without rewards, which is maybe perhaps not the best design choice, however it doesn't hurt the level either as it can be ignored.

In description it says Battle, but you labeled it as 'Single Player'. Maybe edit the upload?

Gefeliciteerd Koen