Afterlife: Rickard's Quest update 1.13

[Ryan]

Afterlife: Rickard's Quest version 1.13 is out now, with the following updates, mainly changing the meta-game to (hopefully!) make the multiple difficulty settings for each Act a little more intuitive for new players:

• Added workaround to help prevent potential bug in external library.
• Access to higher difficulty levels for an Act is now locked until lower difficulty levels have been completed.
• Renamed difficulty levels.

The latest version can be downloaded here, and a full changelog for this and all past updates can be found here as always.

Please feel welcome to post below with any further comments, thoughts, questions or suggestions.

Ryan

[Oxens]

Hello.

Today I caught "ERROR #6"

i played realm 3 act 7. The error appeared when I broke the block blocking access to the right side of the level.

P.S.
i'm very happy to be back in a great game again. The game has become much more difficult !!! Now perfecte complete level is requires more nerves and time. It is a pity that the healing function was lost when collecting all the balloons. Please consider to return this function. I'm not sure if it will be possible to complete all the levels in 7 minutes and without a single damage

[Ryan]

Hello.

Welcome back!

Today I caught "ERROR #6"

i played realm 3 act 7. The error appeared when I broke the block blocking access to the right side of the level.

Hmm. I've just opened up the game and tried playing through that Act a few times, and I've not managed to recreate this. Have you only seen this error once, or is it preventing you from completing the Act?

i'm very happy to be back in a great game again.

Thank you.

The game has become much more difficult !!! Now perfecte complete level is requires more nerves and time. It is a pity that the healing function was lost when collecting all the balloons. Please consider to return this function. I'm not sure if it will be possible to complete all the levels in 7 minutes and without a single damage

The requirement that no damage had been received in order to achieve a Perfect grade was added in v1.10, back in 2012! Collecting all the mana balloons does still heal a single heart though, and this is now true regardless of when the balloons are collected, or the current difficulty mode.

Prior to v1.7, the balloon was always destroyed by any damage in all difficulty modes. Part of the intention of limiting Perfect grades to games in which no damage was taken was to return an element of the game's original difficulty. Believe it or not, some people were able to complete the entire game that way! I think the current system provides a much more reasonable challenge.

[Oxens]

The error occurred the first time. If it happens again, I will immediately write all the details of its occurrence.

As for the complexity:
I didn't even know that it was more difficult before. I love the one-life idea! Players who were able to complete the game completely "perfect" are really hardcore =)

And what about reducing the time allotted for the passage of the level? Was it 7 minutes before?

[Ryan]

The error occurred the first time. If it happens again, I will immediately write all the details of its occurrence.

Thanks, that would be useful.

And what about reducing the time allotted for the passage of the level? Was it 7 minutes before?

The Act time-limit change from 13:00 to 7:00 was made in v1.12 in 2016.

There were several reasons for this, including the technical need to ensure that replay data could always be stored in full (as this was the update that brought in full-length replays, whereas previously replays had needed to be recorded manually); but one of the main reasons was that I felt like the previous 13:00 time limit was so long for most Acts that it didn't provide any additional challenge. A time limit of 7:00 should be plenty of time to complete most Acts, but hopefully adds just a little bit of pressure to play a bit more aggressively in situations when hanging back would be a little too easy.