Single player, by 
Visual Appeal – 4 out of 5
Yay, I liked this one a lot ;D. This level certainly has a good amount of eyecandy. The plants, which are often neglected, are used widely here and give the level a nice feel. There are some original things made with the plants, such as the singular vines, which are also nice. The background is nice (albeit taken from the official JJ2 levels?) and there’s enough stuff to keep it alive in the foreground. There weren’t really any outstanding bugs in the tileset use, nor any bad eyecandy ideas.
My only gripe here is that more could be done with the background. You could have experimented with the textured background fades (which work only in 16-bit mode, by the way). You also could have put different tiles on the layers than just take them off the official levels. Anyway, that’s pretty much my only complaint, as this is very good use of the Carrotus tileset.
Playability – 4 out of 5
I also like the way this level plays. This level’s definite plus is that the level’s main path forks into two, and the player is supposed to choose the way. Not really an original concept, but it’s always nice and the newer levelmakers tend to neglect that design feature. It’s easy to backtrack once a way ends and take up with the another one, which is also good. This level is also full of random pickups and secrets, which is an important thing in a SP level. I really like the biggest secret in the level, which is kind of tricky to access, but is certainly rewarding. (I’m not going to spoil it though, download the level and play it yourself).
However, this level also has a bit of problems. The main one is that it’s a bit easier to play this level with Spaz (the so-called Spaz bias). Like, there’s this place where the player needs to crash a crate to access coins by jumping from a platform. However, Spaz can get to the coins just by using his double jump. It’s also easier for Spaz to get back to the upper road if the player is coming back from the lower road.
Other than that, there are no real bugs which could destroy the gameplay (maybe except for the secret warp target with ID 143, the player gets stuck in the wall if he warps), and the gameplay itself is solid.
Summary
- Decent eyecandy
- A fine example of how a SP level should look
- Could use a little more original eyecandy
- As well as some polish to the gameplay
Overall
As you can see, I did enjoy this level because it’s how a real JJ2 SP level should look like, in my opinion at least. If I like it, why shouldn’t you?
