Ok, time for me to review this, just to get rid of all the short unsupported ones :P
Standard Tiles
In short, I only have one thing to say about: MEZ-wannabe. Seriously, about 75% of the set is nothing but blocks or parts of blocks, talk about a huge collection. Not just the “one tile” kind or the “four in one” kind, you can make them as big or as smal or as oddly shaped as you want, this set comes with every kind imaginable. I’m especially impressed with the slopes: most of the blocks have to white (top) or to black (bottom) gradients and the problem with slope tiles is that they extend beyond the tile when the slope ends. Fortunately, this set comes with a huge collection of blocks with “end of slope” gradients, for every situation possible. However, it is sometimes hard to make out which one you actually need :P
As for the blocks themselves, the author focussed on two main colors, grey and green. There are some black ones which fade to purple. The red ones are actually Sucker tubes (more on that later), but I really like the look of the grey with the blue inside.
Extra Stuff that’s good
I said before roughly 75% is nothing but blocks. The rest is filled up with extras (duh) in the shape of H- and V-poles, spikes for all four directions (in standard orange or moving purple crystals), destructable blocks, (all kind, ripped), a hook (also ripped), keyholes and keys (in red, blue, green and yellow), text signs (ripped and edited, he even made seperate signs for regular and boss levels), arrows (ripped from JJ1), invisible tiles and the Sucker Tube mentioned before. Now what makes the tube special is that it can go diagonally. Now, the event itself can either go horizontally or vertically, so using the diagonal part correctly requires some creative cheating. But it’s not impossible :)
Eye Candy
You’d think there wasn’t any space left for that, well think again ;). With a name like “Crystal Blocks”, it’s not surprising you can find crystals. The best part is you can animate them: either letting them shine and glow, or just blast them like the knights in Castle. speaking of animations, Other pieces of Eye Candy include some standard Smiley-Faces, letters and numbers, and even some random Jazz sprites. The funniest piece would have to be the block with “I was here”. For the background there’s a new Texture made by Olsen, and some pointy orange mountains. If you want you can use the smaller for it as shown in the Example Level.
Masking
As always with blocky sets, not jagged edges or anything. The event tiles are all masked properly: the spikes edges are cut off, the poles are unmasked, and the hook only had that little strip. Nothing worth complainig about. :) Hidden mask messages are slowly turning into a necessity, even this set has them :P
Verdict
A lot of effort was put in it, you can tell by it’s sheer size. Even so, it’s still only a giant collection of blocks, and may not really appeal to anyone. Still, he shows promise. I’ll give it a 7.5 for the effort. Keep it up :)
- JelZe GoldRabbit =:3