Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

It’s a rather simple and short level that could’ve been better with more pickups and more enemies. Albeit rather unremarkable, I can tell that Spyro really tried to make something nice. Can’t recommend it though, unfortunately.

Cute level!

Alright, here we go…the somewhat devils advocate. I put N/A so people will read the text, not the number.

TL;DR: It’s a solid, expansive map with attractive visual flair, but don’t expect any boundary-pushing gameplay with spectacle. It’s mostly traditional (albeit trickier) gameplay with an extra coat of paint and context. And perhaps that’s your jam!

EDIT: This review is a bit outdated. Will update once I’ve played the new version.

The long version:

**WARNING: Spoilers below. **

_{Disconnected thought dump}

The NPC dialogue was silly (and somewhat cute at times). It added some life to the world.

The gameplay certainly fed my " Let’s explore the heck outta everything! " instincts on a first playthrough. I liked challenging myself how much I could defeat with blaster alone, though I did occasionally use other ammo for enemies in super tricky spots.

Nice to see this set finally used, and the extra Christmas aesthetics are a fun little flair. The water layer reflection also makes its debut in an actual level! I’m not sure if it would move at this temperature, but who cares this is a cartoon rabbit game.

Was hoping I could unlock more areas (maybe secrets) by freezing springs. I never really use ice in single player. Maybe there was but I wasn’t looking hard enough.

Those bastard tiny dragons blending in with the scenery…

The bossfight was…underwhelming. All that build-up. And then it’s just a bog standard xmas Bilsy fight and we come to an agreement after defeat.

_{Quality of life suggestions}

Minimap: Such a large, expansive map would benefit from telling you where you’ve already been, and where to go next. Maybe even hints for the next missing present? It’s not exactly fun when you’ve almost collected everything and you’re navigating for miles on end through dead enemies, just to find one or two missing collectables. coughs in Spyro flashbacks

OR an arrow that points to the next missing present, akin to treasure mode pointing to exits once you have enough. More simple and doesn’t really cover the already explored areas, but perhaps way easier to implement?

More checkpoints: While I never died, lesser seasoned players may do. For a giant level, it could be really cumbersome to die in some places. In that case, it’s probably better to put the boss checkpoint just after the hole to avoid the long falling sequence (maybe one slightly above the arena?).

Warpable checkpoints before you’ve collected the minimum amount. Because big map and collectable items, yadda yadda.

This is really minor, maybe a trigger scenery tile that changes in clear sight when you destroy the trigger crate? Would give players a clear idea what it does. I almost forgot myself…

_{Spectacle suggestions}

As you descend into hell, the surrounding environment would slowly transform into a firey hellscape, setting the mood and realization that something is off.

Give the Bilsy bossfight/arena more spice. Add fire hazards, floating platforms, bubba, idk. Maybe he could leave a temporary, hazardous trail of fire as he warps away, and he aggressively warps to your position? Or, maybe these ideas are better left for an extra phase, instead.

A tougher, extra boss phase would’ve give more experienced players an incentive to collect all presents (and the PU reward would still stay). This could delve more into the story, too. Who knows…maybe we could end up fighting Santa himself, mad about his dirty secret being revealed.

_Bugs!
You can get stuck between the tiles at 113, 104 and 163, 125 (in-game pos). Any other sections masked like this will have the same potential (so I won’t label them all unless asked). No big deal, debug or cheat mode will help and it takes a lot of fiddling to trigger it.

Super nice! This looks great and is fun to play. The non-linearity is done well, in that you don’t get lost too easily and come across the important parts of the level more or less naturally. There are some nice Christmas-themed custom events (I loved the falling Christmas balls) and there are small secrets everywhere which makes the level fun to explore. Overall it definitely has that holiday vibe and it’s nice to see that Jazz Jackrabbit games can still deliver that in 2023.

The (medium) difficulty felt just right too – you can’t just run around willy nilly, but it’s also not too challenging. There’s even a small story to the level which is nothing too special but nevertheless executed well.

This is a great level and you should play it!

Not much to say honestly, this is a damn near perfect level, with an insane size, gorgeous eye candy and level design crafted to near perfection.

The whole open ended nature of the level is greatly appealing to me, reminds me of Silent Night level made by Slaz. Here you need to collect gift packages instead of coins. Aided with a very soothing soundtrack to the level, makes for a great overall package.

My only complaint might be that for a level this big, some extra checkpoints would have been nice, other than that, this is a perfect level in my eyes.

Definite recommendation.

Over the years JJ2 has seen an explosion of multiplayer gamemodes. Sch wizards as BlurredD and EvilMike wove together arcane contraptions of sucker tubes and trigger scenery to create levels that, even when played in vanilla JJ2, still followed the scoring rules of Team Battle or Last Rabbit Standing or the like. JJ2+ canonized these, and others with more complicated rulesets, from Pestilence to Headhunters. Mutators expanded the playing field still further. But somewhat lost in all this was the idea of single player gamemodes.

In general there have only ever been two goals in single player levels: either get to the exit (which may involve a boss battle), or collect all items (usually coins). Within collecting levels there are two subtypes, one where collecting everything makes you win immediately and one where you have to go to a specific place afterwards, but they’re largely the same thing.

But there’s a third mode that’s lurked around the edges, only making an appearance every once in a while: horde mode. The level design stays constant, but enemies keep appearing, and either they die or you do. A major example is TDI_07.j2l from Moonblaze’s “The Demon Invasion,” where a regenerating coin and an invisible coin warp serve as a countdown timer. hgfDiamondusColosseum.j2l from happygreenfrog’s “Operation Cleanup: Turtle Terror Revisited” uses scripting to implement an enemy quota, so the level will not end until you’ve killed enough (regenerating) enemies. Both make the assumption there must be some sort of measurable goal that the game itself keeps track of for you, or else why would you bother?

The Lapidarian Chaparral says screw that noise.

The Lapidarian Chaparral decides that you, the player, are in charge of keeping track of how well you’ve done and whether you’ve accomplished whatever goal you might choose to set for yourself. It demands you make up your own emergent gameplay. It puts itself in your hands as clay to be molded into whatever experience you prefer. It is single player by way of sandbox. It is, in a way, a metaphor for JJ2 and JCS as a whole.

Sure, with some work Lark could probably piece together a complicated system of a generating coin, an electro-blaster SCE, and various belts, animated tiles, bridges, and so on, that periodically dropped a coin into a pseudo-random spot in the level, so that you have to keep moving around to find the next coin. It would be pretty cool. But there’s a boldness to giving up on that altogether as irrelevant.

Sure, the concept still has some limitations as implemented. In the current version of JJ2+, regenerating enemies and pickups don’t give points, but pickups spawned from regenerating barrels do, so if score is your goal, you should focus there. Sure, certain areas are purely safe, so if your goal is actually to set a stopwatch and see how long you can last, you’re just gonna hang out next to a carrot and walk away from your computer. But does Lark really want you to do that? More importantly, do you really want to do that? Or do you want to blast turtles?

Anyway. Cool to see Jungrock. Level looks nice. Didn’t notice any bugs.

Gosh. Lark. Long time, kid. Thanks for dropping by. Happy new year.

I didn’t think Jazz 2 levels would make me cry. I didn’t think Jazz 2 levels would make me cry three times.

Literally perfection

Well, other than the fact that the approach of this level is not my cup of tea, I think it’s overall a good level. I think the layout and the eyecandy is really cool. The open ended nature of the level actually appeals to me (though this most likely came due to the fact that it was designed as a battle level originally). Music is pretty good, though I don’t know why there’s that noise at the beginning of it that sounds like background chatter in a bar.

Things I didn’t enjoy are basically the fact that the level can’t be ended in a traditional way, since there’s no level end trigger, basically you just run around the map until you find everything. Which brings my second issue, everything respawns. Obviously it’s not a flaw, since it’s an endless loop level anyway, but still, navigating through the level gets a bit frustrating when enemies you’ve already dealt with spawn back on top of you. Also, it’s supposed to be a single player level, but pickups all still have the “battle level” mindset, so you only pick up ammo and health (and a secret water shield).

Rather than making it an endless loop, I think it would have been more fun if there was a coin warp that teleported you to the end, once you collected all the coins after exploring the map.

Still, the level itself is really good, just the overall fundamental design to it isn’t really for me.

Ah, I missed this one when I was doing my Psych3-edits tour the other day! This has some good moments with warps but doesn’t always do a great job of trying to impose layout edits. I miss the fly carrot but reluctantly accept the float sucker stomp sequence is also neat. Definitely on the more interesting side of the genre, though imperfect.

A decently lengthy pack with highs and lows. The highs show up more toward the end, so you leave with a good memory, but it takes some work to get there. I like the original, memorable sequences like the airboard level, the frog level, the fun and colorful rainforest level—I’m less into the trigger crate chasing, and there’s a lot of it.

Gorgeous looking level. You somehow made a Diamondus/Inferno wall mashup look so natural that I didn’t even consciously think about it when I first played it. The large crystals from Ceramicus in the foreground do look a touch out of place with their lack of detail. But that’s more than made up for by screen-filling parallax background layers that give the sense of an expansive landscape behind the sprite layer – moreso than any other JJ2 background I’ve seen.

In gameplay, it’s a traditional CTF level and wears that on its sleeve, no wacky gimmicks. But I always like when levels are asymmetrical and I always like when carrots are placed in out-of-the-way areas, and this level has both of those things so I like that.
Besides, there’s next to nothing to actually complain about here: balance seems good, the level flows pretty well thanks to extensive usage of One Way events, and both flag bases are interesting to approach and defend.

Definitely looking forward to seeing more, and being doubly impressed if you do pull out another great level within 23 days!

Its not bad for third lvl !

I like that you are trying to use background layers and adding some eyecandy into the map. As abdgrenv said, ammo and enemies placement feels kinda random, and unbalanced, also i dont see the point of putting free powerups and carrots right in your way, it feels like you got it for free and its not really challenging.
It kinda looks like you are just testing on this map what you can do in jcs and thats totaly alright, but i would reccomend you to upload those maps into discord jcs chat than here. We can tell you there advices and opinions there so you can improve. In my opinion on j2o you should upload single player pack with more than one map. I think ppl would enjoy it more that downloading sp map one by one. But as I said, for 3nd maps its very good visualy and i think you can make big things in the future! (sorry for the low rating but 6,5 is too high imo, i just want to average it)

Pretty decent level overall. Has some platforming challanges added in, which was a nice addition. There’s 1 secret, and a detour to break a crate to be able to progress.

Issues are mostly the same, a bit too much ammo packed right at the start of the level, while the level isn’t really difficult enough to warrant that much ammo, and especially that many health carrots.

All things considered, I had a decent time.

Second map by this user, and I have to say it’s an improvement compared to the first one.

Let’s start with the positives:
The level layout is pretty good. While the first map was pretty straightforward, being a straight line with some platforming for extra goodies in some rooms, this one feels more like a complete level. No branching paths that loop into each other, but there are some areas where you can go out of your way to get some extra goodies.

Luckily the pickups have been spread out much more sensibly this time, so there aren’t just a bunch of areas with a ton of goodies as if you entered a coin warp.

Same can be said for the enemy placement, while nothing challenging, they are competently placed.

Also, a coin warp and boss fight is present as well.

Now for some negatives:
The biggest one I can bring up is the difficulty, the lack of it to be more specific. While the enemies are much better placed than in your first level, there are a still a bit too few of them. There were multiple pretty long streches where I was just walking in a straight line because there were neither pickups nor enemies. If you are afraid the levels would become too difficult if you put many enemies in them, you still have the option to make some of the enemies be “hard difficulty exclusive” in the level editor.

While I don’t think the level itself looks ugly or empty, I did instantly notice that you only used layer 8 and didn’t do anything with layer 5, 6, 7. Diamondus is one of the best tilesets for beginners because the it has a lot of potential to be made interesting looking. The boss area for example stands out in a good way, since you had a bit of fun with how you made it look.

Here are 2 examples of what can be done with this tileset:
https://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/5775/mines-of-diamondus/
https://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/6921/cold-flash/ (this is an altered tileset, but most of it are still the original Diamondus tiles)

Some extra advice: Adding some secret areas make levels a bit more interesting. Use layer 3 to hide secret rooms, or just place warps in certain particular places for warp secrets. Don’t make them obvious, but give small hints through tileset patters.

As for the coinwarp, that isn’t part of the tileset (even though there is a partial tileset for it). All you have to do is place the warp, set the amount of coins and change the “ShowAnim” part from 0 to 1 to make the coinwarp rabbit appear, though this only works for 10, 20, 50 and 100 coins in the vanilla version of the game. If the coin warp requires any other amount of coins, then yeah what you did is a viable alternative.

Summary:
A rather significant improvement over your first level. Improved level layout, improved item and enemy placement, improved the general use of events. It’s a competent decent level.

What a nuanced colour palette and sweet atmosphere. All the incredible details and animations. Is it a bee or a mosquito? A Beescito? True to your distinctive style. Amazing set Blade! I don’t dare to rate that magic.

First upload by this user.

Let’s start with the positives:
For how linear and straightforward the level is, it actually looks pretty decent. The different layers are used pretty well, so even though you’re mostly going in a straight line, at least it doesn’t look boring or lazy.

Though it’s short, some areas have potential, as far as the layout is considered. Sure it still needs to be filled with some enemies and the variation of pickups need to differ, but it’s apparently a test level, so there’s that.

Now for the negatives:
Most importantly. Variety in pickups and item placement. Don’t just make a room with 8 large gems, and 4 weapon powerups. It’s like placing all the gems at the beginning of a Spyro level, so then you don’t bother to explore the level itself. The level is basically a continuation of rooms with a bunch of pickups, which don’t complement the decent layouts of the rooms.

Enemy placement needs to be improved. You only used normal turtles, but there are about 8 in the whole level, and half of them are in a straight line grouped up in each other (use the Stop Enemy function to keep them apart from each other).

The buttstomp and destructible blocks don’t work as intended, you shoot 1 and the whole row disappears (you also need to shoot the buttstomp block, though it’s irrelevant since you can jump over it).

All in all, there might be some potential here. Some of the issues are easily fixable (item & enemy placement), while others may need some practice in the level creator to learn (what functions each event has)

10/10 HYPE

It’s the perfect tileset for making, for example, sky levels! Good job Blade!

Well, it contains a vivid, animation heavy tileset with a beautiul 3 examples for know-how. Even though it’s overly-vivid in my taste, I see there are endless possibilities for levels filled with colorful eyecandy. Good job!

thanks Violet for the generous review!