Hi, I am Kjartan Pierre Emilsson, CEO of Sólfar but also responsible for the online development of In Death. I am happy to present a new online asynchronous multiplayer feature that we have been working on these last couple of months. We hope you like it but we are also looking forward for suggestions for improvements.

As many mortal players might have noticed, getting a seat in the Pantheon of the All-time leaderboards can seem like an insurmountable endeavor and even the 24h board is difficult except for the most seasoned players. Showing your own global ranking is meaningless when you are lost within the masses, as it changes rapidly and gives you little sense on how you compare to your peers. This got us to think how we could make the crossing of the Styx a more enjoyable and social ride.



As it currently is, the leaderboard is based on gold collected within a run and the run itself is affected by the achievement profile of the player and the randomness of the level played. This means that using gold collected as the absolute measure of skill between two players is not completely fair, or it would only be so in a perfectly balanced game. A more fair assessment of the relative merits of two players is how they would compare in running the exact same run using the exact same achievement profiles. In that scenario we at least factor out some important starting conditions, leaving only player abilities to affect the result. This is why we are now introducing an additional leaderboard to the game which we call The Ladder.



To reach ultimate glory, you must climb The Ladder which is divided into several terraces. You start at the bottom terrace, called The Proud, working your way up until you finally reach your ultimate goal called The Lustful. Within each ladder you will be accompanied by a cohort of dozen other players that will stay with you while you dwell there. At any time, you can challenge other players by choosing them from the Ladder.