I know that this game doesn't get many runs, but I'm still really passionate about this game and believe it has insane speedrunning potential that we've only barely scratched the surface of, and I wanted to brainstorm a few ideas of what some potential new categories could be, and how successful they would be.

Tower of Sour%- Probably the category I'm most surprised doesn't exist yet. In my opinion it would work great as something of an alternative to any%, since they both require a lot of work to unlock/tame a similar amount of pinatas. I could see this being a little annoying since you would have to deal with the trap areas for both Lemmoning/S'morepion and for Cocoadile, and you'd have to get five master romances for Macaraccoon, but overall I think it's the most logical macguffin to race for that isn't already experiencing runs.

Dragonache%- While Dragonache is another big macguffin within the game, I can definitely see this being loads more tedious because of having to rely on the Diggerling. Ironically enough I think a "Choclodocus%" might be more viable as iirc you wouldn't need to rely on the diggerlings since you can purchase red bones in the shop. Still, I think it has some potential.

Langston%- A run in which you complete every single one of Langston's challenges. This one is especially interesting to me as it would have a wholly unique set of requirements not seen in any run (at least, I'm pretty sure you don't need this for all awards!) This would likely require you to do a lot more unique niche tasks within a run that could make it feel fresher compared to everything else, although it still may bleed a bit into All Awards, just with the addition of getting a lot more costumes.

Romance Minigame Runs- Romance Maze times are actually already counted in game, and they have some really neat potential and strats (i have personally grinded Whirlm and Taffly myself!) Adding 86 new categories would definitely be a lot, but I wanted to throw it out there that romance minigames are a pretty neat, inherently speed based section of the game that isn't really represented within our community.

Flutterscotch%- A run simply requiring all flutterscotch variants (not master romancing them). It would have a somewhat unique route and I can see it being pretty fun and interesting to get as many flutterscotches as you can as soon as possible, as well as having the added difficulty of needing a pretty high level to get all of the required flowers.

Let me know if yall have any thoughts or ideas of your own!

those who don't have system link are at a disadvantage, the easy thing to do is just start when the garden is first playable, similar to how Mario Kart 64 averages NA and PAL times

As a joke category, this percent has you trying to romance a piñata with it's offspring as quickly as possible. It ends as soon as the romance dance notification appears for this. An easy way to tell which piñata is the offspring is not not rename piñatas leaving their names "Whirlm 1" and "Whirlm 2" for example, so you could romance either of those with "Whirlm 3" This is just something really dumb I came up with, thought it was kinda funny.