Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

A fun level! Nothing too revolutionary, but it does a good job of throwing new things at you often enough to stay interesting, and manages to be both not completely linear and not confusing, which is no small feat.

There are some neat ideas too, like the crate you destroy by hitting it from the bottom. One of the text signs even got a laugh out of me. Overall just a nice level that’s worth playing.

Finally, a new single player level I can check out :)

This is a really fun, well crafted level. If you like secret hunting, then there’s plenty to find here, you’ll also get a large percentage of your coins in secrets, though other than for being a completionist (which luckily I am, or at least try to be) the reward is not that big of a deal, plus it’s put right at the end, before the boss room. It also gives a 1Up powerup, which is usefull I guess, but the boss and the level overall isn’t difficult.

Enemies are standard turtles and lizards, but their placement is pretty well thought out, meaning you can’t just rush through the level. Tileset is the standard Easter tileset from Secret Files, which is fine since it’s an easter themed carrotus which is already a pretty varied and userfriendly tileset, though I wouldn’t have minded something else when it comes to the music, though that’s mostly a personal thing.

It’s too bad JJ2 never incorporated the end level score for enemies and pickups like JJ1 did, because 100%-ing this level is a lot of fun, there are a ton of side areas which aren’t even necessary to finish the level, all full of mini secrets. I actually managed to find enough coins for the coin warp on my first time, since I always try to explore everything I can, when I’m enjoying a level, which in this case I certainly was.

I don’t think there’s much more to add, it’s a tightly crafted fun level, which is definitely worth playing through.

It’s great to see some of these again after their image hosts took them down! Simply replying to the thread with these might have made sense, but I suppose there’s no guarantee whichever other image host might not go down in turn… J2O is the only site we can really rely on. Some fun images, ranging all the way from wild stuff to totally trivial now.

This is a review for just one of the levels in the pack, namely Ancient Abyss. I have nothing to say about any of the other levels at this time and because they’re not uploaded separately, there’s no better place to leave an individual level review.

Every once in a while I bring up how much I love Ancient Abyss, generally followed by weird looks from the audience and no acknowledgement. Hardly anybody remembers this level. It’s a weird experimental stage in Snooze’s level design career that could’ve only possibly made sense in 2008 and we’ve all since moved past it. Well, I haven’t. I remain forever impressed by what this level accomplishes.

The initial impression you get when you first see Ancient Abyss is that it’s a regular, simple CTF layout. A bit claustrophobic, with little room for premeditated combat maneuvers, and full of places to safely camp. Even at this point it’s easy to notice that the visuals are wild. There’s a clear disregard for the concept of tiling. The intended use of tiles is treated more as a suggestion than anything. Tiles are flipped and layered together to create complex abstract patterns. Does it look good? You could argue for either side. The sharp edges, or so-called tilebugs, might bother you, and it takes some imagination to see this as more than a mess. But I think it takes both courage and genius to attempt something like this on such a scale, and to me the result is impressive, interesting, and pleasing to look at, at least for the most part.

But that is not what’s really distinguishing about the level. What is, is the massive over-100-tile drops on either side of the level. Every time you take one of these, you spend about 5 seconds in freefall with nothing to do but look at the scenery quickly passing by. If you find these, fall down one of them, and you’re highly unimpressed, it’s hard to explain what’s so special about them, but let me try.

What you have to understand first is that making a multiplayer level doesn’t always have to be about making a level that facilitates competitive gameplay. Nobody will tell you this, but there’s no rule that a level must strive to actually play well. It can, and that’s great, but that’s only one direction of design. Deep down, all levels are art, and while most aim to be pop—easy to understand and wide in appeal—there’s plenty of room for exploration of other genres.

From a gameplay perspective, these 5-second drops seem like a terrible idea. Nobody reasonable would put them in a multiplayer level. No other level contains something like this. And that’s what makes them so great. Falling down one of these for the first time is a jarring, confusing experience, only amplified by the unusual changing scenery as you fall. You could never see it coming. It feels like finding a hole in the level geometry and dropping out of bounds, halfway expecting that your journey will end abruptly in the bottommost row of the level with no floor to stand on. The terrain looks even weirder and more foreign and it feels like you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, exploring the unknown. When has another CTF level ever offered you that experience?

Of course, the problem with this perception is that it is entirely personal. To you, these drops might be 100 tiles of wasted space with a regular old piece of layout at the bottom. I can’t possibly convince you that it’s more than that, just as I have no way to convince you that a piece of abstract art is worthwhile or a song that sounds like noise to you is a masterpiece, actually. All I can say is that the experience exploring this level mattered enough to make me write this review—years after seeing it for the first time! It felt fresh and different, and it stuck with me.

So is Ancient Abyss a good CTF level? Well, no. At least I don’t think so—I never managed to convince anyone to play it with me and I had little desire to do so myself. Even aside from what amounts to 5-second cutscenes you have to watch every time on the way to collect power-ups, it has 3 full carrots and 2 small ones, which has got to be way too many regardless of the player count, not to mention how easy to camp they all seem. It’s cramped, hard to navigate, and probably just not very fun to play.

But also, yes. It’s unique and catches you completely off guard, and offers an experience unlike any other CTF level, so long as your mind is open to something else than playing another regular game of CTF, and willing to see it as art and not another toy. It’s not a good idea executed poorly, it’s quite the opposite: this is an idea that never had a chance to work, executed incredibly well. I think that perhaps not everything has to be "good" in order to be good.

It’s a fine level if you like the kind of levels that Slaz makes. A bit claustrophobic and lacking in enemy variety though.

A commendable effort by the author. The theme is well realised with a creative combination of tilesets, and the layout, while being rather cramped in places is quite novel and offers a decent gameplay experience. Nitpick, but I’m not sure if the level needed 3 different weapons that shoot downwards; 2 would’ve been enough. Great level nonetheless!

Is this a vanilla, traditional level? Well, sort of, yes. Enemies are the most basic available—thematically, if not mechanically—it’s an official tileset with the standard music, there’s nothing wild about the background use. Slaz even sacrifices an entire background layer just to controlling the speeds of the textured background, rather than let a single line of scripting take care of it. There’s not a lot to describe on these fronts because yes, this is in fact how Carrotus (or Easter) tiles go together—though, to be clear, a very strong example of the form.

But sort of, at the same time, no, tradition is being bucked here. There’s a question that lived me with the whole time I went through the level: what are all these coins for? I got to the end of the level, beat the perfunctory boss battle, and still didn’t know. I had to go in a second time to discover that there was a coin warp I simply missed the first time. Even if you do better than me and manage to notice the warp right away, I think you’re still unlikely to have enough coins the first time you encounter it. Especially because you can’t really know in advance what the target number is.

So you go back and play the level again, this time maybe somehow doing enough exploring to collect all the coins. But why? What’s the reward? Nothing too much. The reward does speed things up a bit, but if you’re replaying the level, you’ve probably already beaten it. You don’t actually need the reward to beat it. You could make a completionist argument, sure, but is it possible—and bear me with me here—the goal of playing the video game is simply to have fun?

Because this makes a lot of things about the layout make sense. This level trusts completely that you want to collect goodies and find secrets. Sometimes you even have to find secrets to progress, unless there’s yet another alternate route that I missed that would work as an alternative. But also there are large areas that aren’t necessary at all. Sometimes because they’re alternate routes to the next stage in the journey, but sometimes large areas that don’t go anywhere, that just loop in on themselves and contain goodies and secrets and things. The goal of playing these sections is playing these sections.

And collecting coins in them, I guess.

Anyway, those were the thoughts going through my head, deprived of sleep as it is this weekend. I can’t promise they have anything to do with Slaz’s actual intent with this level, which has a lot to recommend it even if you don’t stop and get confused about the meaning of coins or whatever. Slaz’s levels tend to have lots of little microsecrets and these are in full force here: some are little holes in walls, some are in the floor, some are more complicated. But they tend to be signaled. There tends to be some visual sign "secret here! try to find it!" on the wall. It’s something I associate with Slaz a lot and it works well here.

In general, this level is filled with moment-to-moment stuff. You enter a new room and suddenly you could climb those eggs, you could go up that slope, you could stomp that block. At least one of those options will probably help you progress. There’s a whole lot of use of vertical space, including clever uses of springs, and even some swinging platforms that it’s actually worth paying attention to. There’s very little flat ground, there are not dull rooms where you walk to the right while shooting lizards, there are not moments where you purely turn your brain off because it takes no work to decide what to do next.

And in that regard, this is not a usual traditional level.

slimy land was always one of my favorites

Absolutely amazing.

Level design as place, rather than as gameplay encouragement. You can battle here, if you want, and JJ2’s gameplay will shine through despite the level not doing a whole lot to encourage it. But mostly this lets you hang out, in a fantasy of being inside leafy mountains. The kind of thing that usually isn’t uploaded and so risks getting lost.

Umpisuoli ratkeaa, level is tedium!

woha
amazing!! thanks so much for uploading it!! :D

of course i got a fan of the first Rainbow runner set!
thats why i was interested of the other pieces
im so much thankfull that you uploaded it for me =)

//good things:
this tileset have a lot of interesting things!!

i like the rainbow with the sparkels very much!!
and the whale, your work is so amazing!!!!!
.
and.. the sky castle
=
i love it!
.
.
there is a lots of interesting stuff inside!! ;D

A great twist to normal CTF gameplay. Flag scores happen a lot more often, the rules are simple enough to explain to people, and it's always entertaining when one base has both flags and everyone in both teams ends up fighting there.
After a couple dozen games with it I think I outright prefer it to regular CTF!

Fantastic looking tileset, it fits the JJ2 aesthetic almost perfectly.

There are some particular ideas that work here, like the super long hurt areas to encourage copter-earing, or the tiny blocks in front of enemies so the player slows down. The use of springs is good. But mostly this level just feels a little too empty to me, graphically and functionally. The gems just off the main path are a good start, but there need to be more pickups in general, especially ammo (e.g. bouncers and ice for the Bilsy fight), and some more variety in wall size, and a lot more visual detail.

There’s a definite logic here, an internal vocabulary, even if it’s not the one we’re used to seeing in JJ2 levels. The massive supply of RFs at the start sets us up to run through the level at high speeds, blasting missiles in front of us to take out the unknown enemies waiting ahead. It’s not a challenge, but it is fun, and I think that’s worth celebrating. It does mean that the morph monitors get destroyed by accident, unfortunately. The two platforming segments and the dungeon also show good instincts to change up the gameplay at intervals, especially as two of them are preceded by steep drops which serve as good signals that the player is entering a new area. Graphics are largely rudimentary, despite the clever use of the foreground to cover gem rings, but get their job done. The level is over very quickly but I can see this kind of design philosophy being put to good use.

It’s always interesting to see the occasional level with a fundamentally different idea of what level design should look like. Some of that seems to be produced by a lack of technical knowledge—layer 8 and the coin warp stand out—but the long open passages also make possible a sense of uninterrupted speed that can go missing in JJ2 SP sometimes. This is not to say that every choice here contributes to that feeling—in particular, the float enemies take too many hits to dispatch quickly, and it would be nice to find some way to make the ammo alcove areas somehow flow back into the main level so the player doesn’t have to completely reverse direction—but it still does feel like something that could be worth pursuing, especially with an easy to use tileset like Diamondus that doesn’t make it hard to have super big levels. This is very fast (and drastically overestimates the difficulty of the tuf boss) but everything certainly works in it and it’s nice enough to spend a minute or two in. All the trees are a good touch.

In a community that sometimes seems to strive to produce the most beautiful landscapes and luxurious buildings, it takes some courage or at least ingenuity to aim for something bleak, desolate, and screwed. This is a mixture of War Torn (by theme and perspective), Casualty Mines (by palette and, in some places, shading), and just a little bit of Baltyville Sewers. The aliens from Future that have spent the last however many years hoping to go mainstream make another appearance here as well.

Standout artwork here includes the tentacles, the ruined walls that curve away from the camera, the cozy lumpy background cave, the intricately pixeled background hills/buildings, the bones, and the barbed wire. The green slime is colored and outlined well but is a bit off if you look at it too closely. Giant Dreempipes-style tubes are always cool and these are great examples of the form, with lots of cracks and bones and things to keep them from being nothing more than gradients.

Weaker elements include the pillowy garbage bin, the depthless floor texture, and honestly the palette, which is mostly a little too obvious and a little too discrete. The ruined buildings suffer the most here, looking for all the world like they use the sprite palette like in Shrunken Jazz. A soft tint to the tileset could help, to make the disparate elements blend together more, as could gradients that start and end in slightly different hues, so the player’s screen is a little less obviously a blotch of this color on top of a blotch of that color.

Right now, despite how comparatively unique they are, the ruined houses are letting the rest of the set down a bit—I also wonder if taking a trick from Haunted House would help, allowing some foreground walls for layer 3?—but this is a moody, elaborate, and downright innovative set with lots and lots of different options to try out, both the main elements (walls, caves, tubes, houses, slime, aliens) but also the sheer wealth of incidental drawings (tires, furniture, electrical poles, barbed wire…) to keep a level feeling fresh and interesting and not-machine-generated.

"mini" tileset is probably the right term, not so much for the number of tiles but for their content. Looking at the titular grass shows the issue: it’s much closer in size to JJ1 Jungrock than JJ2 Carrotus, and JJ1 is displayed at a much lower resolution than JJ2 is usually played at. Jazz and other sprites look overly large against it, and the wall texture is sufficiently noticeable that it’s hard not to make the screen look repetitive—which, again, wouldn’t be an issue at a lower resolution. This would be a great tileset for a different game, because despite their size, the images really do look very nice. The treetops are my favorite things here, both the bushy-yet-plausibly-flat ones and the gnarly spiky foreground ones, though again the trunks are too small for this game. The background hill palette could use some more thought, it blends in too much with the foreground.

"Gorgeous" is a great word from minmay for this, but the other word I’m leaning toward is "natural." It’s easy for CTF levels in particular to feel very deliberately crafted, to maintain balanced gameplay—which is not itself a bad thing, as the crafting can produce very elegant results—and this is not that. Nor is this the opposite extreme where a level is completely devoted to being a picture with zero concern for playability. Instead Timberland somehow achieves the impossible of an asymmetrical, playable, utterly natural level to which nothing can be added and from which nothing can be taken away. Alcoves and slopes abound throughout the map. Powerups and ammo are sufficiently out in the open to seem as if they grew there naturally. The tileset—the truly incredible conversion work, blending Diamondus and Inferno to an impossible degree, with a perfect palette—is so organic that it is often difficult to believe the level is composed of tiles at all. The grid is invisible, the walls full of what looks like they must be nonce or bespoke connections. An absolute delight to play, an honor to experience.