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[Ryan J. Bury]

Hello Tiggers!

I'm very happy to be able to announce the release of Afterlife 2: Rickard's Journey, the sequel to my previous game Afterlife: Rickard's Quest!

The game has been in development for some three years, and as you may guess from the screenshots, it takes a very different direction from the first game: whereas Afterlife: Rickard's Quest took a non-linear, dip-in/dip-out approach to game progression, Afterlife 2: Rickard's Journey is presented in the form of an epic narrative platformer, following the story of Rickard's new adventure.  And of course, there are plenty of the kinds of secrets and unlockables you might expect if you've played the first game.

Afterlife 2: Rickard's Journey is freeware, and available here, so please do feel very welcome to download and play.

Anyway, have fun!
Ryan

[Ryan J. Bury]

Hello.

Sorry to bump this, but I just wanted to mention that I've released an update which fixes several bugs reported by players in the initial release, including the problems you may have encountered when setting up custom controls, as well as one or two other issues (full changelog available here).

Anyway, if you're playing, hope you're enjoying the game!

All the best -
Ryan

[mountainmohawk]

Haven't had the chance to play too much but I've liked what I've sampled so far. The only trouble I have had is throwing bombs. It seems pretty hard. Other than that, good job!

[Tanner]

On a scale of one to the first Afterlife, how insanely hard is this game?

[Nate Kling]

I would say its pretty close to the insanely hard level.  I don't know why nobody is commenting on this game. I'm enjoying this game although the level I'm at right now frustrated me so much i had to quit, for now.  I really like the umbrella mechanic and the story line is interesting.  Now on to some critique.  Its way too easy to accidentally throw your umbrella and get it stuck somewhere, that is really frustrating especially when you are at the end of the level, maybe it would have been better if it eventually regenerated back in your hand.  The graphics were somewhat good.  I liked the characters but mixed with the photo environment textures it just didn't mix too well.  I would have liked to see the backgrounds done in the same manner as the characters.  The music was good, I enjoyed the soundtrack.  The bomb attack feels very flaky.  Your never sure where its exactly going to land and its strange how the bomb gets thrown fastest upward when you first jump it all feels very innacurate and that leads to me getting frustrated because it feels almost random.  The game is fun though, im planning to play it the whole way through.

[Ryan J. Bury]

On a scale of one to the first Afterlife, how insanely hard is this game?

I think you might be drastically overrating the difficulty of the first game!

Actually, if you're familiar with the mechanics of the classic Sonic The Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros. games, or other platformers from that era, I think the first Afterlife game is pretty tame overall...  Especially given the ability to save your progress.

I suspect that the reason Afterlife has developed somewhat of a reputation for difficulty is not so much that it's a hard game overall, but that it's a game in which every level is designed to provide some level of challenge, with the intention that the player tries and retries a level until they've worked out a good strategy to complete it, being killed many times along the way, but ultimately gaining ground on completing the game with each play.

I didn't want to throw in a whole set of cakewalk-easy levels to break the player in gently (that's what the training stages are for, after all! ), so the idea is that the difficulty follows a fairly consistent average throughout the game, rather than an increasing gradient.

And of course, the Acts in the first game don't have to be played in any particular order, so there's rarely a reason to feel "stuck", even if a particular level is causing problems for you.

The approach in Afterlife 2 is a little different, of course - but in essence, the principle is the same: no challenge is designed to be easily surmountable the first time around, the idea being that most Acts should take at least a few retries to complete, and then perhaps a few more to discover any helpful secrets that might be lurking around...

Its way too easy to accidentally throw your umbrella and get it stuck somewhere [...]

Throwing your umbrella is rarely a good idea, for that reason!

Instead, try riding the umbrella when attacking (press Jump while holding the Umbrella key, then hold the Umbrella key until you want to let go).  This avoids losing the umbrella, and also allows you to score combo-attacks!

Anyway, really great to hear you're enjoying the game - good luck!

Ryan