What time would you show?
That is indeed the question!
I'm leaning towards total in-game time spent playing, so that would be when gameplay exits to postview for any reason, and doesn't include real-world time (for example, whilst the game is paused). Anything else feels a bit more arbitrary. We could even have it displayed as "Total play time X:YY:ZZ"
Which leads to the inevitable suggestion of whether this could be another thing to display on the postview screen in general: players might want to know how long it took to save 100% on a <100% save requirement level, for example.
I've changed the topic title accordingly, thoughts welcome.
don't show penalty time (when there is a ''Sleeper'' state.).
If we go with "total in-game time until gameplay ends", then overtime would be included. Is there any reason this is undesirable? It may be useful information to the player...?
EDIT:
It's occurred to me that players may actually be interested to know their total real-world time for solving a level as well, particularly if it has taken several sessions. This isn't something to display on postview though; instead, a statistic tracking the total real-world time spent playing any particular level could be displayed in the Level Select screen. Just a thought!