Single player, by 
Visual Appeal – 3 out of 5
Well uh yeah. This level didn’t really have any eyecandy. 95% of the time the player sees the background, which is hindered by the fact that the background layers are visible only at the bottom of the level. Therefore, most of the level just turns out bland and uninteresting. There was layer 5 set to align with layer 4, but it was used really rarely and didn’t have any real effect.Also, the walkable soil tiles could use some work, because most of the time there’s one ground tile used which just added to the blandness of the level.
Also, what’s with all the “pillars” on layer 1? They don’t make much sense moving slower than the layers behind it, and they just get on nerves. And on a closing note, the lightning didn’t help this level too much.
Playability – 3 out of 5
The gameplay itself also left room for improvement, and quite a lot of it. Firstly, I can’t say I enjoy the design of this level itself. The area with instakill lava and lots of seemingly random platforms was annoying, as they were too far apart of eachother most of the time, and the “pillars” on layer 1 just added to the frustration. Also, the spikes on the path leading to that area didn’t hurt me because you misplaced the Hurt events… The platform area apparently forks the level into two (or technically even three) paths, which is a nice thing and one of the few ones which are anyhow original.
The layout turns non-linear from that part, and the player has the ability to go for the nonobligatory areas and get stuff there. And here comes a complaint, why were all the pickups so sparse? I can understand that you wanted to limit on ammo, but the wide lack of food was just ridiculous. In the platform area, I had to destroy a wall of destruct blocks just to get two tacos?! Come ON. Also, the lower path becomes rather boring after a while, with all its random (and fairly ugly) bridges. Also, there are spikes in that path, and once again they didn’t hurt. Test your level before releasing next time.
Anyway, after one gets past the non linear part, there comes a challenge: the player has to RF climb up a tunnel. It’s been done before, and this time it’s not even moderately difficult. It becomes even easier after finding the RF pu in the non-linear area (what’s the point of putting such a powerup in the pack’s first level?) After that comes a rather generic area, with nothing outstanding (except for a big gem placed above a lava pool?) and with a few bugs (lizards don’t fall down when floor below them disappears).
Then comes another gimmick: Ride the rock. And once again it’s been done before (the unfinished TDI2 exploits the rock ride gimmick perfectly), except this time it’s not really as fun as it was in Moonblaze’s levels. After that comes some generic platform hopping, and the last challenge in the level: the player has to stompjump generating bats (which hang on platforms on layer 3… make the level less confusing next time). This is probably the most original part of the level, but still it failed to amaze me for two reasons, one being that I constantly do stompjumping in SP levels (and manage to run through some Invasion of Deserto/Rebirth of Evil levels in less than 5 minutes), and another reason being that in this level’s execution this was just frustrating. The bats end up being placed way too far off the goal, which made it difficult for Spaz (the author should’ve used a morph in the level), and they were also considerably too far of themselves in some places.
Anyway, after getting past that comes the end, and a fairly generic cutscene which explains the story which I’m not too fond of. And that’s the whole level really. Not too interesting is it?
Summary
- Could be much worse.
- Is fairly bad nonetheless.
Overall
This level is just average. Test your levels next time (make sure everything actually works in them, coughspikescough) and make them less frustrating. And I find this rather ironic, since I’ve seen you point out “this level was frustrating” in some reviews of yours even. Download reccomendation? I’m not sure. There are better SP levels to download out there, after all. Only download this if you’re extremely bored.
