This game has a level skip glitch like many other Nitrome games. Here it is in action:

Found by RetroTreasure in 2018:

I didn't time it, but it seems slightly faster than the strat the current WR uses.

The run has no audio so it's probably unsubmittable (and there aren't any level categories at the moment anyway).

First of all... good luck.

I'll start by explaining why I'm making this forum post: recently, we realized that the Nitrome series on speedrun.com was almost complete, missing just a couple of games. One of these games was Ice Breaker: The Red Clan. I started playing it to try and build up to an actual speedrun, expecting a similar experience to what I'd gotten with the sequel (Ice Breaker: The Gathering), which was somewhat difficult and sometimes frustrating, but ultimately very manageable.

As it turns out, Red Clan is significantly worse. It has many more levels where it feels like you have to slice correctly to the millimeter and be forced to reset if you fail. In other words, in this game, it is sometimes possible to do everything correctly and still lose. Thankfully, this isn't the case for every level, but it was enough to overpower my motivation to complete a full run. After a few initial attempts, I wasn't having any fun running the game anymore.

I did, however, run all 40 Individual Levels. I figured it was better to share them with the world than leaving this game's leaderboard in its sorry state, even if I wasn't going to complete a full game run. I did come up with a few strategies on my own, but most of them were taken from 15 year old YouTube guides.

I hope my level runs can be useful to anyone who may want to run this game some day. If you follow everything I did, you should be able to get a time of less than 25 minutes, at minimum. I'm sure there's potential for a much faster run though.

Here are some notes on the harder levels:

• 11 - I have two runs for this one. The slower one is easier and can be used as a backup if the faster way does not work.
• 14 - There are two ways to beat this level, and I have runs on the leaderboard for both. One is significantly faster, but both are horribly inconsistent, so I'm not sure which one is truly better.
• 16 - This is a prime example of a level where you can play perfectly and still lose. I don't have any tips, just get lucky.
• 17 - This is another very random one. I cut up the ice wall at the end more or less on a whim, but it seems to be the way to go to prevent the vikings from getting stuck on that wall at the end.
• 24 - I was unable to replicate this.
• 26 - Good luck with this one. Here are some other ways to beat it that I either found too inconsistent or wasn't able to replicate at all: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
• 27 - It doesn't look that bad, but this level is easy to mess up. The first three vikings can randomly refuse to slide down the slope(s) or get stuck during the fall. The fourth one is also tricky: sometimes you can't get him to slide down properly, and if you don't cut up the ice in a certain way at the end, he will overshoot the boat and fall in the water.
• 29 - This one isn't hard, but there's a slightly faster way that I wasn't able to replicate.
• 31 - The ice cube does not have to hit the viking, it can hit the rock and the strategy will still work (slowly).
• 32 - I couldn't get this strategy to work.
• 33 - The third cut is deceptively difficult to get right.
• 37 - Very easy to mess up.
• 39 - This one is slow by design, but I didn't try doing it this way, which seems a little faster.

That's all from me. Good luck to any future runners!

I first experienced this a few weeks ago, but I saw it again just now.

I submitted two runs to a game I moderate, and verified them right away. The date on the leaderboard does not match the date I inputted when submitting: it uses the previous day's date (in my case, 2022-07-01 when I specified 2022-07-02 when submitting). However, when I go back to edit the run, the date is correct (2022-07-02), so the error is only about what gets displayed.

What's going on here? I'm assuming it's an issue with time zones, or something similar. Has anyone else experienced this?

If it's relevant, my time zone is North America / Eastern (currently EDT, UTC-04:00)

Does anyone here have good experience with managing somewhat complicated categories? I'm in a bit of a bind and don't really know what to do with the situation.

Some background information: I moderate a game called Twin Shot. (https://www.speedrun.com/twinshot). It contains leaderboards for the original Twin Shot, as well as Twin Shot 2, the sequel.

• Twin Shot has 50 levels.
• Twin Shot 2 has 100 levels, split into two 50-level sets (known as "Good" and "Evil") that can be played separately.
• Twin Shot 2 has a feature known as "Cheats and Treats", that lets you do things like permanently activate power-ups (e.g., invincibility) after you collect a certain number of coins in the game.

As of now, there are four main categories and one misc. category:

• TS1: beat all the levels of Twin Shot.
• TS2: beat all the Good levels and all the Evil levels of Twin Shot 2.
• Good%: beat all the Good levels of Twin Shot 2.
• Evil%: beat all the Evil levels of Twin Shot 2.
• 200% (misc.): beat all the levels of Twin Shot, all the Good levels of Twin Shot 2, and all the Evil levels of Twin Shot 2.

There are also some subcategory variables:

• Angels: To indicate if the category was played with 1 or 2 players. Applied to all categories.
• Game state: To indicate if the category was played on a fresh game file (NG) or not (NG+). This is relevant when playing with Cheats and Treats, as NG runs still have to collect all the coins needed to unlock power-ups (+ go and activate them in the menu), whereas NG+ runs can have everything unlocked before the run even starts. Applied to all categories except TS1.

Here's the problem: I want to set up categories for Twin Shot 2 runs that do not use the Cheats and Treats feature, as runs that do use it cannot be compared to those that don't, and I want Twin Shot 2 categories without cheats to be "relevant" to run (plus, there are already some "No Cheats" runs on the boards).

I can see two ways to do this, but they both have some problems:

1. Make a misc. category called "No Cheats", with a variable that indicates which category was played (TS2, Good%, Evil%, 200%). This is how things are currently set up; it works okay, but it feels a bit messy, the No Cheats runs are kind of hidden away, and there is probably a better solution.
2. Ditch the No Cheats category and replace it with a subcategory variable, that is then applied to all categories except TS1. This is better in some ways, but it also makes the NG/NG+ distinction irrelevant if your run doesn't use cheats, as playing from a fresh game file or not does not change anything unless you do use them. It's not a big problem, but still kind of annoying. If there is a way to work around that, I am not aware of it.

What's the best way to set this up?

"But why are Twin Shot and Twin Shot 2 merged together in just one game if you can't play the original Twin Shot levels in Twin Shot 2?" I wasn't the one who set things up this way so I'm not really sure. I guess because of the 200% category? It has zero runs though, and as far as I know, nobody has ever shown an interest in running it. The games could in theory be split into "Twin Shot" and "Twin Shot 2"— plus "Twin Shot category extensions" where 200% could be moved (if it's kept at all). I suppose No Cheats runs could also find a home here, but putting them on an entirely different leaderboard does not feel quite right. Re-structuring the leaderboards this way may be the better solution, but it requires a decent amount of work (setting up + moving all the runs over), and considering the very low number of active runners, I would rather avoid it unless it is absolutely necessary.