With the release of v2.0, speedrunning this game gets significantly more interesting and faster since you can manage your own ingredients and make significantly more money with skills. I've been running speedruns to get the Philosopher's stone which I think is actually a pretty fun category. Any chance that the category could be added to the leaderboard?

Having run All Golden Feathers a few years ago, I was feeling like picking up the game again. Wanted to do something a bit longer, but wasn't super interested in All Unique Collectables due to fishing. So eventually I came up with all feathers (gold and silver), Avery medals, and hats. Adds quite a lot of "stuff" to the run, making it quite a bit longer than AGF. I really enjoyed routing and running it and am hoping that others might also be interested.

I've put together a walkthrough video covering my route, and also text route notes that are compatible with Splitnotes. Or try routing it yourself, which is quite fun.

Text Route notes: https://pastebin.com/XtivZqi0

Walkthrough video:

Current PB (15m:08s):

If you are looking for something a bit longer to run and enjoy All Golden Feathers, I cannot recommend All FMH enough. Would love to see some others pick up the category!

I've been thinking a bunch about the categories in this game. I don't think they are organized particularly well. There are too many of them, and are too similar. In particular, I think the separation between premium / non-premium is so small that it should be removed altogether.

Let's look at the powerups:

Infinite Lives - This obviously doesn't save any time at all. It is extremely easy to not die 5 times in a row. On my second ever any% run, I managed 0 deaths. I feel like infinite lives should just be allowed. It's a small advantage for beginner runners, but it is super minor. Even when banned, it is sooo helpful while practicing that I can't imagine not buying it anyways.

Coin Doubler - This saves a small amount of time in full games runs. You could just ban it altogther or allow it. But the difference between coin doubler category and non-coin doubler category is so small that it is not worth having both. My current any% route would probably be around 5 seconds different if I was allowed the coin doubler.

Infinite Golden Cat - This upgrade doesn't actually let you use the golden cat in every level. All it does is make it so that when you die 3 times in a level, you don't have to actually watch an ad to pick up the golden cat token. So, it saves absolutely no time in a decent run (unless there is a level where it is faster to die 3 times and then pick it up, which I doubt). So again, I would just allow it, or just ban it in every category.

My second issue is the individual world runs. They are categorized under Any% or 100%, but it feels very strange to me that if you run any% full game, you can't actually submit your world subsegments to the individual world categories, since it is tremendously slower. In the full game, you need to collect some number of bells, wait for doors to unlock, levels to appear after finishing a level, etc. Also, in single worlds, you have (effectively) infinite money and can take any exit out of levels.

Individual worlds are actually more like a NG+ category, which is something a bit different. But there are actually runners (Godchueco) who are running NG+ full game. So, this should just be a category with individual world subcategories.

Last point, why are X-? levels required in individual world any%? They are completely trivial if you don't need the bell, and they aren't required for the world so it seems strange to include them.

So, my proposed structure is this:

Any% (Beat 6-8 from a new file. Coin doubler banned, Golden cat banned, Can't watch ads to unlock worlds)

• No Subcategories

All Bells (Beat 6-8 from a new file, with 92 bells. Coin doubler banned, Golden cat banned, Can't watch ads to unlock worlds)

• No Subcategories

NG+ (Beat all levels in order (any exit) excluding ? levels. Start with however many coins/helpers you want. Golden cat banned.) Subcategories

• All worlds
• World 1
• World 2
• World 3
• World 4
• World 5
• World 6

NG+ All Bells should (IMO) not be a category, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to exist.

Feel free to use any combination of things I've described here. ie: Allowing golden cat and/or coin doubler would be fine for any%/all bells. Banning infinite lives for any%/all bells would be OK as well (but should certainly be allowed for individual worlds).

If we do allow infinite lives, then timer should start when you start 1-1, not when you start the game, since you need to actually restore your in-app purchases every time you reset.

I was thinking about a new category for this game: No preigniter. Same rules as beat the game, but the weapons preigniter is not allowed. I feel it would be a lot more interesting because it removes the largest RNG factor. It would be much less reset heavy, and it makes runs much more finishable.

Any thoughts?