While playing the game for the 1st time I couldn’t help but notice world 8 was weird with one thing. Every single level of that world except for the first one was starting with a death and therefore with a level restart. At first I thought it could just be an issue for Android. But playing story mode on iOS proved me wrong. The same phenomenon kept happening. It didn’t matter to me that much since I could still finish the game. But speedrunning world 8 only became quite a big issue. Not only that, but also restarting world 8 run would initially stop the countdown because of the “death.” Another run restart would spawn me out of bounds and therefore I’d have to die to be spawned in a proper starting point. I’m writing about that since it affects world 8 speedruns quite badly with an independent 1-2 sec time loss per each level whereas the only run of the world doesn’t seem to suffer from the bugged deaths. In the attached video you can see why I’m concerned about that. My gameplay is quite cringe, but it’s not worth any focus for the sake of the bugged deaths.

The run on the leaderboard was performed on an older version of the game: 1.2.11. I believe the relevant patch note afterwards is "Fixed cat being able to take damage during a room transition" for 1.2.12. This fixed a related issue we had in World 3 but may have inadvertently created a worse problem in 8. As for why that world specifically, I would assume it's because of the Companion. I'll look into it more later.

I've confirmed the glitch was introduced in version 1.2.12 and is not present in 1.2.11 (or at least is not so easily encountered). Looking over the patch notes again I found "Fixed minor visual glitch related to the Companion" which may or may not be relevant. There are of course the unspecified "Other improvements/fixes." Still unsure how to avoid it.

I'd say in such a case I'd introduce subcategories in world 8 with one being pre-1.2.12 and another one being 1.2.12. Although the bug vastly affects world 8, I think it's also worth adding a variable in the full game runs. Such a variable would be game version and the options to choose would be the same as the world 8 subcategories. The reason why full game runs should have these just as variables and not as the separate subcategories is that despite the bug the gaps are still going to be quite huge due to mistakes being made in other sections and the pace of a player. And that's how I'd see things.

I can understand the logic behind making sub-categories, but doing so to create a separate leaderboard for one single run is, in my opinion, a little silly. Not to mention this glitch has already been reported and will likely be patched out in the future. Even if it's not, this wouldn't be the first instance where a version difference could have split the leaderboard but didn't. There's also the option of downloading an older version of the game and running that in the meantime (the IL rule of needing to play on the latest release is an artifact from before speedrun mode that could potentially be removed). Suffice to say it's far too soon for discussion on complicating the leaderboard.

I remember that in one game due to the glitch found in one of the levels that certain IL has been separated into the glitchless and the glitch sub-categories due to how much of time the glitch could save. As much as in the previous version of src it didn't affect the leaderboard that much, it did in the latest version where instead of just a WR there are top 3 results in each IL. Due to such a change, the top 3 of that IL show both the best Glitch time and the best Glitchless time which have been set by the same guy. So perhaps making a sub-category just for that may not be the best option. But what could be an option is to remove the requirement of playing the latest version due to the handicap one could have by playing the version with the explained glitch. Perhaps the players when submitting their runs from such a point on could state which version they were playing? I think it could be optional in case it's meant to be stated in a run description. Another option is to create a variable "game version" where one could choose which version they've played. That info would be displayed on the leaderboard which would be the same for all versions. Though it could be tough, so probably the best idea would be to let players play whatever the version they want and to optionally state game version in the run description.

You can also just wait for the game to be patched

It won't take long for that, It'll be fixed soon

The other possibility for that issue can be fixed from the moderators. If we know how long is the time loss for each room transition, then we can remove these loses on the final time. It's not the best option but it can at least fix this for the leaderboard while the bug will be actually fixed by the developer.

Got some news. In the latest version the world 8 issue has been fixed. One fix of the patch notes states:

“Fixed certain items with specific toggle platform settings causing the cat to immediately die upon spawning, if the spawnpoint was placed at room origin.”