Grab the key before the Stomp Rats minigame. You can climb the tree and with luck zip on top of the invisible box above the branch. Would love to be able to skip Chains as well but I haven't managed to, skipping Fishing is closer. Also imo it's probably faster to do the swamp in the reverse order eednob does but naturally it's hard to test that.
Discord server would be cool.
Also worth mentioning there's a Stomp Rats skip that is unfortunately very inconsistent. If you hit it first try though it'd save over 1m30.
Hey I'm going to be running this very soon as well so I've been poking around the route a bit.
You can indeed skip the save quit which is what Faschz did in his records. To do so you just need to jump in the northwest corner until you zip back on top of the invisible geometry. Faschz also mentions new tech in the last room but idk what that is. Presumably in the minigame?
Thank you! I definitely wish there were some other runners to explore different ideas. It's a shame the game never got the polish it needed to succeed. I think you're right that the hub is the same, with only scenery changes. l'll have a go trying to clip into the hut at some point, boss level could very well be functional and just blocked. I also wonder if it's possible to exit the training area early, but it's unlikely the level triggers are active. Shame it's XBox exclusive, save states would be so handy.