Devan does it again! Boy oh boy he does!
I decided to stop my Ischa Boycott to see if Ischa’s level-making skills had improved. Honestly, here’s the blunt, cold, hard, truthy answer: They’re still terrible. Here’s the sugar coated answer: Keep trying! You can do it! B Moe Positive!
Whats so hard about the concept of getting people in the community to betatest your levels? You don’t have a deadline, and you’re apparently not making purposely bad levels, so why not? I know you read these, as you’ve gone to such lengths as to prove a simple line in my review false, so why not actually take the advice? Sign up at the JCF and make a topic that says “Hey, I have a level, does anyone want to betatest who isn’t going to forget 6 days later?”
Onto the actual level. I’ll let stealing a concept slide. I’ll even let underutilizing the FLoating Rock slide.
What I won’t let slide is the level’s poor design choices.
Why in god’s name would you have the player start by WALKING IN THIN AIR, if later on, every pit kills off the player? That is a terrible thing to do. You toy with the player by adding a secret slightly left to the starting position out of sight, after he’s/she’s used to not having anything there. You don’t toy with them by laying down a ground rule (example “You can walk on thin air”) and then a little later break said rule.
Next, whats up with the Stone Lady? She constantly never makes sense. First she addresses you as “Jazz”. The next time you see her she says “If you’re Spaz or Lori”. Later on she just starts spurting out gibberish but makes it sound important by saying “according to me”
The level itself, is a terrible disjointed mess that’s linear the whole way through. Really Linear. Aside from when you need to get up to the next straight path, the whole level is just a straight path. Theres even a section where you push a crate for 20-25 tiles NOT DOING ANYTHING. It’s a waste of time. Dont get me started about the lame tacked on “jump over fire with 1 tile wide safe zones randomly scattered” area. Finally, there’s the boss fight with Devan. Can we seriously just stop using the same arena for this guy? I’m sure Devan-Stories would be more appreciated if the Devan bossfight wasn’t on a straight line of an arena. Seriously, can we also give Devan a little more motivation than “I’M EVIL! I ‘M OFF TO GO DO EVIL THINGS NOW! HAHAHAHA” or any other villain for that matter. Just because Super Duper Badguy Lemon is the villain of a level, doesn’t mean he’s automatically better than Devan. Especially if he has no motivation to actually do the evil deed aside from “I’m Evil!” (That was aimed at everyone else, not Ischa).
In JJ1, Devan’s motivation was that he hated rabbits and wanted them wiped out. In JJ2, his motivation was to wipe out Jazz’s parents so he can wipe out the rabbits without the Green hare meddling in affairs. In JJA, Dark Shell wanted revenge on Jazz for defeating him 2 years prior.
Those are all short and simple motivations that make the villains much more interesting than “I’m EVIL”.
Finally, the Moon is a jerk. Well, the oversized Boomerang that calls itself “Moon”. he could have flown away anytime he wanted too, but didn’t because he wanted to see Jazz beat up Devan. What a jerkface. If our moon was really like that, I would go to space and slap it on where I assume it’s cheek to be.
It should be clear to anyone who has read this- No Download reccomendation.