Eyecandy
Where have I seen this It’s kinda hard for me to rate this level, for obvious reasons; it uses the Diamondus Beta tileset which is very familiar to me. Anyway out of the whole ec, I especially like the bg layers (6 and 7), with caves and trees behind them, like in blacky’s crematoria (?) gf level. And as for the worst thing in this level, the foreground bushes. They look as if they were placed randomly without any thought involved.
That’s all for the best/worst things, now lets get back to the EC as the whole. I liked how some of the diamonds had the Steady Light events on them (not too noticable on a normal speedy game though); there was some food in the soil (an interesting effect, but I didnt like it too much). It could use a few more holes in the soil and more trees on the layer 3. I also found a tilebug in the bonus (a cut cavern).
Gameplay
Well uh, what can be said about gameplay? Firstly, the layout is built nicely, it can produce fairly fast-paced games, without any bumps or obstacles. You can run from one end of the level to the other with barely even having to jump. The bonus (seek PU) also speeds up the gameplay. The only thing which may slow it down (which is good since too much of fast pace can get on nerves) are the powerups hidden in walls – Blaster, RF, Bouncy.
And since we’re speaking of ammo, I should note that there are all kinds of ammo (w/o tnt), accessible easily and in fair amounts. There are also three carrots here, which would be good but two of them are in the 30 coins warp. Maybe there are more carrots but i found only those 3 :/
Summary- Nice layer work
- Well placed, easily obtainable (wth hard word >O) ammo
- Interesting layout
- The bushes look bad
- A bit too few holes in the ground?
- Could use more carrots
- trees behind caves
- the vine reminds me of insdark3 D:
- the tree in the lower left corner (reminds me of The Lost Battle Game )
But anyway, these things don’t make any bad effect, they actually make the level have a ‘familiar’ feel which makes it deserve appreciation.
[Textile fix. ~Cooba]