Before I begin the review, I would like to point out that this is TSF NOT 1.23. It wouldn’t work on mine. Please fix the version. There is now a V2 of this level included but it’s still not as good.
EYECANDY
There isn’t really anything that special. The backgrounds are good but the eyecandy in Layer 4 does look a bit too repetitive. All I could see most of the time was those Red Bricks.
5/10
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay was OK but the level was a bit too short. The false floors were interesting but these might get a bit frustrating after a while.
The level has been made slightly longer. There is now a new area with lots of Turtles & Sparks to get through but it still wasn’t challenging enough.
A race level is also included but it’s just the same level with no enemies and all the items are still there.
5.2/10
ENEMY PLACEMENT
Sparks were used in this level. There were far too many of them to be found here. I was at 1 Heart Health most of the time. Some were badly placed, in one area there were 4 placed above a Blue Spring which is not good as the player will end bouncing into them. There were less Sparks in V2 this time.
4/10
PICKUP PLACEMENT
At the start there was a Box of Seeker Ammo, DON’T place these too early in the level as it can make it far too easy. There were some Coins but these were a bit useless as I didn’t see any Bonus Warps. There were too many Blue Gems placed in one area, about 15. Placement is not bad but there are too many Gems to pick up. I also thought that there wasn’t enough Carrots here. The amount of Blue Gems has now been reduced to 4 but there’s still a bit too many weapons.
4.5/10
OBSTACLE PLACEMENT
Apart from the false floors I mentioned earlier there was a Warp to find to progress through the level and some test at the top of the level where you had to avoid touching the red bricks. However, these puzzles were still a bit easy. There wasn’t any Trigger or Destruct scenery here either. So, there wasn’t really many obstacles here.
3/10
OVERALL SCORE = 21.7/50 (4.34)
ROUNDED TO 4.3
RANK: F – Bad
DOWNLOAD?
No. There are too many enemies and items and not enough obstacles. You can use it as a Race map but only if you remove the Sparks, as having enemies in Multiplayer is bad.
It is better than Diamond Cave but still not much. I hope V2 of DCave will be better than the previous version.