Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Awesome stuff! Love the HTML configuration and the possibility to have custom gradients on your bunnies! I am surprised how many colors can be customized. Even the ones which cannot be normally colored, like eyes, tongue, eyelids, teeth, inside of ears etc! There is even a color for a bird. Only downside is that you cannot recolor your bunny in-game. Which would be sort of a hassle since there are so many possibilities. Thanks for this awesome mutator!

This is a fantastic idea. There're a lot of cool movement trajectories you can get by morphing during special moves alone, there're a few other cool things you can do with morphing (like changing your sprite to collide with an object you otherwise wouldn't). It's a great basis for a test level, and there's plenty of room to expand and improve on EvilMike's Evil Test.

Unfortunately, Switcheroo is rarely interested in morphing as an expressive movement tool. Instead, it usually has you do a single morphing special move that isn't integrated at all with the inputs before or after it, bordered by boring copter ear precision segments (sometimes with a token double jump thrown in). It teaches you each trick with an overly-explicit tutorial, and then instead of building on that trick in future levels, the same gameplay segment from the tutorial will just appear as an isolated component of a longer level. As a result, most of the levels come out lacking flow and sauce and I rarely felt like I was doing anything cool.

And when Switcheroo steps up the difficulty, it doesn't do so by making you do more complex morphing moves or, god forbid, by asking you to use them creatively (the big red arrows ensure there's no risk of that), it reduces the frequency of checkpoints and steps up the amount of precision, mostly in sections that don't even involve morphing. Which, again, I don't think should've existed in the first place. It's a case study in how easily you can ruin something by adding to it.

Level 23 is an exception, partially. It has a flowy, cool-looking sequence of morphing moves with enough input density to feel intense and challenging… preceded by an incredibly boring sequence that's none of that. It sucks all the momentum out of practicing the cool part when every attempt requires doing something boring first. This level would've been amazing if you just chopped off the beginning. And while nothing else in the level comes as close to delivering on the promise as level 23 does, I at least would've found the other levels much more enjoyable if you chopped out the parts that aren't about morphing from those, too.

Finally, there's the level's presentation. For some reason it's accepted practice to make test levels ugly as sin, and while this level's presentation is not as bad as most other test levels, it still looks Like That – the hazards are hideous blocky tiles (we have scripting now, you can make them any shape you want, why would you choose this???) and every level looks the same except for the color of the hazards and slight variation in how they're scribbled.

So this leaves my evaluation at the damning-with-faint-praise of "better than most JJ2 tests", with the addition that if this had a slightly better level design philosophy it'd be awesome.

Thanks for the reviews everyone so far! It is very exceptional to receive this many in such a short time! :]

It's a simple, yet fun level to play. Personally I like simple things, even though sometimes may feel a bit repetitive but nonetheless I think this level has its charm. The layout and flow is excellent, one thing that I like about the SJ style of level making is the attention in flow, you can go from point A to point B without bumping into anything, the ammo and PU placement is alright. The general style of the level is simple and, like how FawFul's revew said, reminds of other levels that use the Carrotus tileset, especially Land of the Snooze, but i don't really see this as a flaw. The eyecandy is nothing particularly impressive but it's pleasent to look at, I like the bright colors and the "late summer vibes" that gives. I really appreciate the details such as the chaffinch sound and the clever use of the HH98 tiles in the background.

Overall it's a well-crafted level that i recommend to play, and it can be an example that sometimes less is more.

Pretty cool level. So you have your main path. Boom. You can go to and from each flag in a matter of seconds. But that's going to be guarded with the conveniently placed ammo that forces you to explore the map. So, explore time. Here we go.

The springs/one-ways are placed very effectively, creating great overall flow. No annoying spring tricks here, just bouncing around like Jazz should. Ammo is nice, and the level is not over-reliant on custom weapons. I don't like when there are too many custom weapons because then it gets confusing.

One thing I'd love to see in the level is some exits from bases on the sides of the level, to sort of sneak out. Right now, you only have limited ways out of each base, making it pretty easy to get shot at least once sneaking out when you capture the flag. Other than that…

The level in general and the background is gorgeous. I can tell you spent a lot of time. Also, no tilebugs on Carrotus is an amazing feat. :)

Great level! Recommended. I'll probably host this at one point.

I think this level deserves a higher rating. It does a lot of things better than most tests available. The design is great, even if at the core it is not a perfect first time experience.

What seems difficult for any test designer is to make the difficulty fair. This test also introduces a completely new mechanic, that does not feel like regular jj2 at all. You have to also keep in mind that as a creator you get to practise it a million times while making the test and mechanics, so by the end you need to judge the difficulty through the perspective of new players learning. Assessing that situation can be difficult, sometimes impossible to please everyone.

As a newcomer to this test while being fully experienced in jj2, be ready that this is a test where your jj2 knowledge and muscle memory will not give you much, and your first completion might take several hours, while your 5th completion can be in a matter of minutes. I will not lie that my first run was quite frustrating. But this also proves a point that while it is new, it is quite consistent and not the most precise thing ever, not in comparison to jj2 movement. It just takes a lot of practise. Your first attempt failing is your lack of experience.

However, if frustration hits new player experience, does that matter? Is this a fair difficulty spike? JJ2 basic movement is very difficult to learn in itself, especially when it comes to high precision for tests. There are still tests out there for vanilla movement that are way more fit for masochists than this test, but the fact that people maybe put thousands of hours in jj2 makes taking the next steps a bit lighter. Keep in mind that for a new jj2 player 99/100 tests are completely miserable. But if we assess the test after practising, you can bet that Switcheroo is not more difficult than the most difficult vanilla tests, and this shows with how reliably I can set records in Switcheoro while still getting stuck in jj2 movement tests after thousands of hours.

So it is not that Switcheroo is inherently bad, but it will feel unnatural at first. And not only that, it feels mostly the opposite to jj2. Many jj2 controls are normally quite floaty and have delays. Switcheroo has character switches on frame 1 inputs, this clashes a bit with what JJ2 is and might feels conflicting.

So I would say what does not feel perfect about Switcheroo core design is that what it asks you to improve better each level in big leaps. But I also understand the creator wants this concept to kind of have a beginner and an endgame in one level, while also not making it too long. To have an entirely new concept in a level means that the difficulty will ramp up, and for any tests these can be frustrating roadblocks to get stuck. Which is frustrating for any tests. I think this is also a design roadblock. There is just no way to introduce such a new and opposite mechanic, fit for one level, that is both beginner friendly and poses a challenge for endgame aswell. Maybe some kind of New game+ mechanic where it unlocks more difficult levels after finishing it feels more rewarding, but that is not how tests are inherently work either. There is no solution.

Besides this core flaw, Purplejazz (the creator) did everything I think to make sure the test would be appealing regardless. There is definitely a lot of deliberate design here to ease the pain a bit. It looks visually cool, it has nice music, levels follow a clear pattern and even if you get stuck there is help tips so you know what to do. The switching is very difficult but always responsive, the new UI is very clear. During testing, Purplejazz recognized that he had a lot of practise and levels may be too hard, so basically levels were made to be easier just to fit to streamline the experience. The test does not go on endlessly with too many levels. This has less than 25 levels, so you can not stuck in a level 40 out of 50. Meaning you can still somewhat back out and not get too invested.

Personally, I also want to emphasize that whether tests are puzzles or just pure practise is a design choice, so I hope everyone recognizes this. Personally, I am more a fan of just practising levels than having to solve them first. I think this is very subjective so I was not going to rate on this anyway, but it is still worth mentioning it is a deliberate design choice.

In conclusion, I think the difficulty in this test spikes quite hard around midway through. Beating the first levels is not guarantee you can beat this whole test. You might get stuck halfway. Yes, this test is hard. Getting overwhelmed in difficult tests and having to give up is true for almost any test by nature. Yes, this can be quite discouraging, but difficulty ramp is a necessary evil to fit an entire concept into one level and to give replayability (because the last levels will remain a challenge). The creator obviously wanted to make a full experience out of this concept in a single level. Most of the challenges in this test are inherently spending a lot of time learning a complete new subset of physics. Most of the reason I am not giving this a 9 or higher is because maybe the idea itself is just a bit too much and not very fit for an accessible one level experience, but I can assure you that with these parameters set, almost nothing lacks in execution. I think the creator pushed it as far as he could. And there is obviously a great deal of deliberate and smart design decisions. Switcheroo is a level with own identity, for better or worse.

Fun level without any glaring issues, albeit not particulairly refreshing. It is a small size without any camp spots, so this fits perfectly in the modern CTF era where it is easy to learn and play in for all skill levels. And due to the player base size being small and skill gaps being big, appealing to the audience is probably for the best. However it does start to feel like some levels tend to follow the same formula and lose a bit of identity. It feels very similar to Erathia and Land of the Snooze in gameplay style, but smaller. Visually, it feels very similar to other xlm products that use carrotus, such as levels by Dragusela and Loon. Personally, I like levels where it is a bit more difficult to hunt and tries new things, but it is still a nice level.

This level has pu bouncer and the roller, two very potent weapons from high ground. In my experience playing this in the tournament, the lower area in this level never ever feels safe against those weapons. On top of this, the carrots are locked in place and pretty high up in the level, which makes taking high ground even more favorable. Especially in this level I would have liked seeing shootable carrots to create some more dynamic staying below. The weapon choices and fixated carrots make this level a bit too top-area focused and in the open. It feels difficult to ever feel an ounce of control in this level.

A final thing I noticed is the amount of tiny masks get in the way of those powerful weapon choices, sometimes bouncers and rollers just hit the most awkward masks, making their trajectory quite unreliable when a player tries to climb back to the high ground.

However this critisicm does not take away that this is a well produced level and overall still better than most CTF levels out there. And it definitely deserves to be played from time to time.

Impressive!! I love the vanilla levels, so this was really cool to play. It gives classic JJ2 vibes, ditching AngelScript for some good old fun. I enjoyed playing through this a lot, though I was able to speed run it because I remember the vanilla levels really well, too! I'd love to see you make some more levels inspired by the originals… I don't expect you to remember the entire game, haha. In the future I'd love to see you remake some levels using AngelScript and awesome eye candy.

Oh! Oh this sounds kind of awesome. Was just checking back in to see what levels had released since I last checked and found this. Haven't downloaded yet but I could honest to goodness see things like this actually getting me back into making levels for this game, given some of the kinds of things I already tried to do with my levels to begin with anyway. This could make doing some stuff I'd wanted to do in the past a lot easier!

(Probably not yet though, still a lot on my plate these days, but this has me really interested in giving it another shot some time all the same.)

Nice little level! This is something you'd want to grab for some 1v1 battles. It's easy to navigate and has pretty nice flow overall. I like the visuals, but I think the level could benefit from looking a little "busier" in terms of foliage etc. Lots of ammo, well placed springs, etc. Not overly reliant on custom weapons which is a plus! I recommend downloading this.

I think what I want a level like this to test me on, and what this actual level is testing me on, are pretty much in conflict.

The first few parts are perfectly reasonable, they make sure you understand how to change characters and know what the different characters do. In general you are only being asked to make it through one challenge at a time. If you manage to land on a solid bit of ground, midway through, to rest, you're just about done.

Later this goes out the window. You'll be asked to do two or three long series of movements in sequence, even though they have nothing to do with each other. There are signs that some of the parts may have been broken in half during development—sometimes two parts share the same area and the same warp color—but it's nowhere near enough. Individually the challenges are mostly manageable, but in practice, the level is asking you do multiple challenges perfectly in a row before it lets you progress.

Worse, many of the challenges are much more precise than they need to be. I expected to be tested on whether I can change characters mid-move. That's mostly reasonable! But the passages between warps are so narrow that often it doesn't matter if you get the character keys right, you'll still get warped for other reasons. I would morph to Spaz and do a double jump, but because I morphed one tick too early, I'd hit a warp above me and need to restart. I would morph to Jazz to copter-ear onto a platform, but because I was moving slightly too fast at the end, I'd overshoot the platform and hit a warp behind the platform. These are challenges completely orthogonal to the question of whether I can morph to the right characters.

The level also seems to have no real conception that some things it asks you to do have extremely flexible timing, and others require you to hit an incredibly precise series of keys over maybe a seventh of a second.
For things like that, it does not feel like a matter of skill when I succeed, it feels completely random. The level could choose to reward me for managing to kick as Lori, then morph to Spaz in midair, then morph to Jazz in midair, at all… but instead I have to press these buttons at exactly the right moments, with absolutely no way to know when those moments might be, because the intended path is surrounded by warps.

I gave up at part 17 in two separate playthroughs. I just do not know what it wants me to do—how I'm supposed to fly off those horizontal springs without being affected by gravity. And it's very demoralizing trying to even experiment with those springs, because you need to manage so many very precise, completely unrelated movements just to get there. Maybe if they were at the start, sure, but they're not.

The production quality of this level feels good! It's a familiar tileset but given some nice degree of detail, the warps are nice to look at without being unclear or distracting, there's nice use of negative space in some of the bigger warp areas, the spacey background colors are pretty. It's great to have the F7 clues, and even without pressing F7, there are a number of blocks that hint you to what you're supposed to do next. But half the level is testing if you can figure out how to morph between characters, and half of it is funneling you through unnecessarily precise warp passages, with limited checkpointing. Maybe that's PurpleJazz's deliberate intent with the level. But it's not what I wanted as a player.

(also, a word of caution: set HornFrequency in plus.ini to 0 before playing this level, or you will go mad.)

This makes me feel nostalgic in how well it emulates the feel of the original game. The graphics are simply perfect, although I wish the palette had more variety and the foreground tiles popped out more from the enemies and decoration. I think the existing difficulty in the levels is a good thing, but it really needed more checkpoints and more 1-ups in my opinion (I didn't find a single 1-up unfortunately). The Sonic-like ramps and zip lines stood out to me, wish there was more of them. The boss is also a wonder to see, I like that it's like a better version of the queen boss. The music is also worthy of praise, although I wish the instruments were softer on the ears since you'll be hearing it a lot. The dialogue can get a bit wordy at times but I appreciate that there's a story very much.

Overall, this is one of the best JJ2 projects, just wonderful.

this is a absolutly awesome mutator!!
which also very quickly became very popular, that mutator is incredible!!
.
..now i would like, to talk (only a bit), about the level, and tileset:
"ultra hotel 3.j2l", and "0 ultra hotel.j2t", this was originally made by FabiAN[NC], and was planned as the NC hotel for 2022!
..which sadly was never finished..
.
But anyway, the mutator that Cranky worked on, it turned out incredibly great!!!

i think that was one of the most important things ever, that have now been fixed by cranky
you all sure know..
if a player joined the game later, then he saw the (big objects) at the "starting position" every time..
,and not at that position, where they had already been moved there by another player.
i'am so thankfull for this mutator that finaly slove that problem.
.
i think this is a must have mutator for everone!! who love playing cooperative online

I'm surprised you managed to remember it this well, even the foreground tiles too

man thats awesome idea, Cranky is back, more powerfull and skilled than ever :)

These were played in a JDC event. Most of these levels feel claustrophobic and lacking of goodies. If the ammo and carrot placement was a bit better it would have been more interesting. Of course keep in mind these levels are from a different time, but now they lack a bit compared to more modern levels.

These levels are nostalgic but also feel dated now compared to more modern levels.

Fun level idea and awesome boost to the frog and bird characters by script. Coming back to this, I do think the level itself could have done more to make the gameplay around these characters a bit more interesting.

Didn't age too well, mainly campy. Despite some nostalgia, modern levels just play a lot better nowadays.