Pumpkin Park

  • Rating: 8

Reviews and comments

    cooba 8 Nov 2024, 01:43 (edited 8 Nov 24, 01:47)

    8Recommended:

    Coated in that autumnal vibe of "dusk by 4PM", Pumpkin Park is yet another piece of evidence of how Dragusela has mastered the use of color in his levels. What would otherwise be a rather scattershot of tileset styles (JJ1, JJ2, and Blade) is brought together by the hushed purple and brown midtones to coexist harmoniously – combined with the quite lowkey background music, this level paints a very pleasing picture to look at.

    With 2 carrots of a moderate respawn time, and a size I would describe as medium, this level seems to be aiming to be a duel level. But some design decisions become questionable if so – this layout is pretty open, and the carrots are not very far apart, so the first player to get the seeker powerup (hidden in a… candy warp, which is cute, but also pretty oldschool in gameplay terms) could probably dominate the game. And if it's not a duel level – why only 2 carrots?

    This entry also lacks a little polish. The FPS, though improved, still errs on the lower side for me, the coin reskins are nice, but with the old sound effect and coin sprite in the HUD they feel unpolished, the title text stolen from The World Spear completely unnecessary and unoriginal, one of the hooks actually uses the Hook event (wtf?), the "final" version uploaded to J2O has no next level setting and still prints AngelScript warnings… combine this with the rather generic layout, and this level comes off as something that maybe needed a bit more time in the oven. (Says the guy who put a deadline on this level in the first place.)

    Overall, a very nice looking level, that will probably play well enough – but not something I'd call outstanding.

    Bonus points: The purple cityscape in the background is really tickling my TSF nostalgia bones, even if that may not have been intentional.

    1 person found this a good review. Did you? Yes/No