Alright, since this is such a short level, this is going to be a short review. Also, I recorded a video for you, if you would like me to make it public, let me know.
Level: Modern Jungle
Creator: GheDro (
GheDro)
ID: 34998059
Song: EnV - Streetlights by Envy
www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/548239Video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2MoKMOG0iAGameplay:
The gameplay in this level isn't too favorable. It is filled with a lot of awkward timings and it isn't really fun at any point. At 14%, when you go into the dual, the positions of each player can become unsynced depending on how you enter the portal. This isn't a big issue, as the whole dual is just the player flying straight, but it can trip people up. One way to combat this is to but some blocks for each ship to rest on before having to fly through so they can sync up. This dual gameplay is very boring, also. It's not long, but the whole thing is just both players flying straight, at least put some other obstacles for them to avoid, but make sure to fix the unsyncness if you do this. At 25%, I find the jump to the spikes pretty awkward, give the player some room to jump down right in the center of the spikes. The next section is just jumping over spikes, very repetitive and uninteresting. At 56%, the disappearing spike is very unexpected and leads to bad gameplay, as the player likely tries to flip gravity long before it disappears. Give the player time to react. Also, it doesn't look good having it just disappear, if you are going to have it disappear, at least have it move out of the way somehow, instead of it just vanishing. At 75%, the pink orb jumps are very awkward and can trip people up, make sure to get the player to fall right in the center of those orbs, to give the player enough time and room to tap, and to make sure they land directly in that portal. I don't understand why you had that yellow orb at 79%. I've noticed that this level has unbalanced difficulty, it's not as bad as some levels, but it's noticeable. For example, the cube section at 20% is noticeably harder than the ship section at 38%. I also noticed that there are some pretty short sections. This is to be expected in a short level, but you should really extend the length of the level, so you can have the sections go on for longer, while still having a variety of gamemodes.
Overall: There are some awkward timings and unbalanced difficulty. Unfortunately, this level is pretty short which brings down the fun factor a bit and any mistakes you make count for a large portion of the score. 4/20, -5 for awkward timings, -3 for unbalanced difficulty, -2 for some bugs, like with the dual, -1 for the memorization in the ball, -3 for the repetitiveness, and -2 for such short sections. +2 for having a variety of gamemodes. The rest for somewhat interesting aspects.
Decoration/Block Design:
The design in this level isn't that great. First off, let me address the colors. It's clear that you attempted to use complementary colors for this level. Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well. You used a dark green and a dark pink, but the complement of green is actually red, so it ends up looking bad. If you are going to use complementary colors, you have to make sure they are the right shades so it doesn't look bad, and you gotta use them to make certain parts stand out, not just mix them together. Let's move on to block design. There is no variety in block design in this level, you just used the same design throughout. You didn't completely neglect it, though. You had the right idea with adding the slopes, you made sure to add some detail, but they seem out of place. Some parts don't have the border lines connect and the glows around the edges do not go around those, making it look unusual. There are slope glows, so make sure to use them. There wasn't too much detail, I thought you could have gone a bit farther. There were some issues with it too. In some places, the pulsing deco went on top of the blocks, make sure to fix that. Let's move on. You have the same custom background throughout the whole level, the pink cube. This was poorly done. The cube is static, and I don't think it can be geometrically considered a cube, the height of it seems too short. It starts moving with the player after the level has started and you can already see it, which is a disaster for any custom background. Along with the cube for the custom background, you had some pillars and decoration, however these started moving at 32%, and stopped moving with the player at 66%, which looks pretty bad. One thing I can say for sure, you certainly did not neglect air deco, however, you really just spammed it all the way through. At 43%, there's an enormous amount of air decoration, it's clear you just spammed it, make sure to keep the decoration under control. I like where you were going with the custom air deco at 18%, but it's a bit uneven so it looks sloppy.
Overall: You need to vary your block designs and custom background. Add more detail for these, but make sure to keep your other decoration under control, or it looks messy. Also, fix your colors. 3/20, -5 for the bad colors, -3 for the block design going all the way through and -1.5 for empty block design overall. -3 for spammed decoration and -3 for the poor custom background. -1.5 for other design issues and mistakes.
Sync:
This level had decent sync. There were a couple of portals which didn't sync with the music, however, there were some that did, make sure all the transitions sync, though, that's a huge part of the level. There was pretty good gameplay sync.. The cube section at 20% had quite a bit going on, though and the ball section had some flips and orbs sync to the beat, the ship sections are what needs work with sync. There wasn't much deco sync. When the background changed color it synced to the beat, which is a good aspect to have, and there were pulsing deco, but these always sync to the beat.
Overall: Gameplay sync could improve, but you had a couple sections with pretty good sync. You need to add decoration sync, you had pulsing objects, but that's just not enough. 6/10, +4 for having a good portion of the level sync, and +2 for having pulsing deco and the background change color at the beat. Not full points for having no other deco sync and some sections and transitions not syncing.
Originality: 0.9x
Unfortunately, there are a few unoriginal aspects. This includes the block design, the cube in the custom background, and some tiny bits here and there.
Conclusion: 4.68/20 (23.4%) Needs Improvement
Colors is a huge issue for this level, make sure to use them correctly, or your level just looks bad. Sync was alright, but make sure to also have some design sync. Gameplay was pretty awkward.
Moving to Needs Improvement
