cooba
8 Nov 2024, 01:43 (edited 8 Nov 24, 01:47)
8
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.
6.5
This one doesn't do much for me. The design's not bad, but the visuals cast too broad a net.
The central oval of the layout, combined with the additional little loop in the top right corner, is pretty interesting. The little roller cutout near the bottom left may be too generous though, especially since it targets one of the only sources of seeker ammo, which is what you'd want to attack someone in that alcove. A third seeker area, maybe near the top somewhere, could help a bit, and would also make the seeker powerup a more desirable prize. 20 coins is a decent target number, though the coin script is a little off, using the candy sprite in some contexts and the coin animation in others. I want to like the awkward purple spring in the bottom right but it's a little too awkward even for me, too hard to predict/control whether you'll go through the one way events or not. Other parts of the layout are fine—good use of varying platform thicknesses, good powerup areas—I'm just not wild about some of the most vital places. Oh, and it's hard to make Boomerang work as a non-infinite weapon, and I don't think Pumpkin Park pulls it off.
The visuals are where things fall apart—they're close to good, but don't quite get there. cooba calls them "scattershot" and I think I like that. There are simply too many different tilesets being thrown together here, and because we can recognize the sources, the level doesn't feel like it has a proper identity. Especially bad are the upscaled graphics (rocks, pumpkins, trees) with no effort made to smooth their big pixels, and the wild Carrotus trees right next to the carefully maintained Townhouse trees. None of the weird random rock graphics overlaid onto the Holidaius texture look like they really fit in, the tree branch platforms in the bottom left are too muted to see, and the random Carrotus/Diam/Psych foliage thrown all over the place is too generic, yet inconsistent, for me to care about. The colors are all a little too muted and the background of Diamondus trees in front of Townhouse buildings is a little too familiar. The Omen Woods caves do look great, though.
Battle, by 
