Diamonds are a girl's best friend, but regardless of your gender you'll probably get pretty attached to them in Arkeus' latest action platformer, Diamond Hollow 2. A young boy wakes up alone at the bottom of a massive cave teeming with monsters, but quickly gains an ally in the form of a sentient gun more than willing to work with him to find a way out and discover what's going on. Use the [WASD] or [arrow] keys to move around, and the mouse to aim and shoot. You can collect diamonds of various colours to upgrade your guns and abilities (press [Tab] to open the upgrade screen) and even find different attachments to give your weapons new capabilities. Just keep an eye on your hearts; if you take too much damage, you'll have to respawn back at the last checkpoint you touched. Just don't be shy about exploring; heart crystals are the only way to increase your health, and both they and a surplus of sweet, sweet diamonds can be found hidden in secret places throughout each stage.
Diamond Hollow 2 originally started out as a 48 hour Ludum Dare creation where the goal was simply to climb as far as you could before dying. With the addition of a story campaign, bosses, several different unlockable play modes, and more, this second iteration feels less like a sequel and more like the game the original was meant to be. You know, kind of like those 1990's teen rom-coms where they teach the "nerdy" girl to brush her hair and take off her glasses and suddenly she's a babe? If you loved the first game, chances are Diamond Hollow 2 will be right up your alley, and you'll really be able to appreciate all the work that's gone into making feel like a proper game rather than a simple time waster. While some of the audio tracks can get a bit repetitive, on the whole the entire design is great and really brings to mind old-school classics on the NES, only without the annoying bits where your parents make you give your little brother a turn. (He just keeps DYING! GAWD.)
Some story levels, unfortunately, do feel a bit drawn out, without enough variety to the layout or enemies to really keep you engaged, and as a result feel like they could have been about half as long if not for the need to grind diamonds. You might also wish dialogue simply threw up a big text window and paused the game, since the little box at the bottom of the screen is almost too small, and easily missed. These are minor quibbles, however, and Diamond Hollow 2 is a great little bit of retro gaming packed with secret areas, achievements, and more. The modest difficulty curve help keeps things accessible to most players, while even hardcore platformers will find a lot to enjoy about it as they trick out their talking gun to the best of its abilities. Cute, ambitious, and easy to get into, Diamond Hollow 2 is a lot of fun and more than worth a look.
Anyone know how to mute? Makes it difficult to play while listening to something else.
@Alan: Main game menu, options menu, bottom center of the game window. Click it. There are several options, including music and sound effects.
It's good, but hard. I'm having a very tough time with the boss on level two. It would be nice if you could kill the missile firing enemies, even if they respawned, or if the constant barrage of respawning enemies in boss fights would drop things like diamonds or hearts every now and then. Would even the odds a bit, in my opinion. As it is, you had better hope you upgraded enough/properly to win or else you're in for a lot of frustrating battles.
@hothotpot Don't forget that you can go back and play earlier levels to grind for diamonds. This is especially helpful when you get new weapons and want to make them stronger.
In all, I love this game. A lot. I really liked the first one, but the fleshing-out of the second one just makes it all that much more awesome. And the Spreader gun is really all you need to win easily...
Well if you don't mind a little level grinding, the difficulty actually balances out pretty nicely. Lots of secrets and you usually can't get ALL the secrets in a level on the first go-through so it definitely keeps you coming back if you're a psycho for completion like I am. Plus, the mini-games are lots of fun in their own rights. Definitely a great job. Love it.
Nice game, although it gets a bit repetetive after time. Upgrading has visible effect in the beginning - but the later upgrades are more costly bus also less effective. The adventure-mode is a very nice addition to the gameplay familiar from the first Diamond Hollow becuase it makes the game more diverse.
I actually didn't care for the first one. This one is much more enjoyable in my opinion.
I've noticed that this game doesn't let you skip upgrade stages -- a good decision on the designer's part.
Some titles, like the Pocalypse shooter, let you get any upgrade level you can afford. This sounds like a non-issue, except that buying a low-level upgrade doesn't change the cost of a higher-one (i.e., if you can afford level 8, don't bother buying level 2).
I'd like to have the option of downloading this game so that I can play it outside of my browser.
I have beaten story mode and have gone back to grab the rest of the hearts and red gems. I can't find the second heart on level 4, even scoping everything. Does anyone know where it is?
Arg, power of posting. Found the little blighter.
You don't need to be completely obsessive about searching all the walls for secrets, to get all the red gems and hearts the first time through (though naturally, the more hearts you have, the more health you have, and the easier it is for you). During the seventh stage, you get the ability to look through walls and see secrets.
Also, in the statistics screen, the game shows you which hearts and gems you have (and thus which ones you're missing); these are listed in order, so if you're missing one of the first gems, you should be searching towards the beginning of the stage (and so forth.)
The mouse shooting is incredibly sluggish and inaccurate, at least for me. I kept dying on the first level because I couldn't aim or time my shots. And whatever the scrolling text is at the bottom of story mode better not be important, because it's zipping past when I'm trying to play. Not very happy with this one.
You can set the text speed to Slow in the options. And the shooting is quite accurate once you get the laser sight. If you can't shoot in a precise way with it, well, you just lack talent for that kind of game !
Really appreciated it for myself. Way better than the first one.
Super ! Very enjoy playing this game.
Thank you for not making it so difficult.
Everything is ideal.
...Man. The ending.
Is there any way to get a "Good" ending?
Where are the triple jump boots?
I was happy that there was a pure keyboard option.
@dmboogie
There is no secret ending, according to a shout left on the developer's kongregate page. Quote: "I left with a consistent ending to make it easier to bridge into a sequel."
How do you beat the shadow boss?
@ Lys
You shoot it. :D
Sarcasm aside, I found a fully upgraded missile launcher took care of most of my boss problems--that and focusing on dodging
How am I supposed to take less than 2 min to go thru stage 1 though?? My speed is fully upgraded
lol thanks for the advice. Where'd you find it at?
It gives you the missile launcher in lv3 and I upgraded it fully by the time I reached the shadow boss
@ Ultio
I beat the 1st level in 1:55 with little to no speed. Max your jump so triple jump throws you very far up past everything
@ Ultio
you used the missle launcher on the snail king also?
I still can't get past the first level!
I press F so that I fire automatically, but how long does it take to kill the giant blob? He keeps coming back after I've killed him!!
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