Edit: I posted this response before the comment above me had a hyperlink. I now suspect that the person above me is a bot account that thought it would be lovely to post an advert in the Harold's Walk forum. (I have no proof of that, it just reads like a bot comment lol).

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Indeed, well stated! :)

Nice run! I didn't know about that climbing trick in Castle, that's super neat. :]

HIGH ROLL-JUMPS

If you roll immediately before gaining height (by jumping, or running into the bouncy ball objects), you’ll go higher than normal. This is sadly not helpful for getting higher jumps, as the built-in super jump reaches slightly higher. However, this trick is very useful for getting slightly longer jumps!

If you do a Roll Jump, then space out your double jump and roll in midair, your extra starting height means you can cross bigger gaps than normal. It takes a bit of practice to get this consistently; I’d recommend learning the trick on a safe stage, then trying it out on a stage like Pink World with a lot of gaps.

In case you’re struggling to get the trick consistently- the most common way I mess it up is by accidentally rolling off an edge before doing my first jump. Since I’m already in the air, the game treats my first jump as my double jump, and I don’t go as far as I had planned.

You can tell this mistake has happened if Harold spins after your first jump. (At least usually- the updated physics since the demo sometimes make this happen even if you are safe? Not too sure why, requires more testing.) Regardless, if you see Harold spin after your first jump, it is usually best to find a safe landing spot and try it again.

LEVEL FLOWCHART

A flowchart of the levels for routing purposes! Some secrets are not shown here, but this should be all you need for speedrunning purposes.

Feel free to use anywhere, but please do give credit! :]

A thread where you can check out speedrun resources the community has made, as well as post your own!

Epic run, well done! Congrats on being the first to post a Void Ending run :]

Hey there- thanks for submitting a run! I am busy at the moment, but will try to get this looked over/verified within 24 hours.

Also, as a heads up, the board/rules are still in a beta state. Nothing significant should be changing about the rules, but it's possible they may change very slightly. I heavily doubt that will affect your run at all, but I just wanted to say something in advance.

Hope you're having a good day! :]

Board is up now! I've gotta set it up a bit more before it's fully done, but it should be functional right now: https://www.speedrun.com/Harolds_Walk_PC?h=challenge-doughnut-ending&x=xd1p1q8d

Please let me know if there are any issues with it!

My request for a new board was reviewed, and denied because I just put the title as Harold's Walk instead of something unique. I'll resubmit later with a changed title, but before I do, do you have any preference what I call it? Currently thinking just Harold's Walk (PC)

Oh neat! I didn't realise that's how you timed Lung- given how many times we've had the same idea, there's a non-zero chance we may just be the same person at this point lol

I should try to speedrun Lung at some point; I'd be no good at it (at least at first) but it seems fun. :] (Your runs are super impressive btw!)

Oh neat! I didn't realise that's how you timed Lung- given how many times we've had the same idea, there's a non-zero chance we may just be the same person at this point lol

I should try to speedrun Lung at some point; I'd be no good at it (at least at first) but it seems fun. :] (Your runs are super impressive btw!)

I have submitted a support ticket to create the new speedrun board. Again, we do not have to use it if we do not want to, but I think it's good to get the submission process started sooner rather than later.

Here is what I described the game and proposed rules as, just to keep you all on the same page:

This is a PC re-release of the 3DS game of the same name; however, it has so much additional content and so many changes that the Harold community has decided to request a separate board for the PC version. An identifier that differentiates it is (PC, 2024) .

Some PC changes include:

-3x as many stages as the original game

-New physics, as well as removing the old moon jump glitch that was used in speedruns

-A brand new ending to go for, which we intend to make a category

-Much more!

We will start with 3 categories, all based on different endings of the game. The first one will be the Bad Ending; this is the quickest to get and will basically work as an Any% category.

The second one will be the Challenge Ending; this requires playing through a lot of PC exclusive content, and would act as an in-between for Any% and 100%.

The final one will be the True Ending; this requires getting every collectable in the game, and functions as a 100% category.

For all categories, time will begin when the first level starts loading, and will end when you desired ending starts loading. We are planning to use loading specifically as it is easy to visually identify.

I suggested the loading rule as I thought it'd make it easier to time/retime runs. If you disagree with that, though, feel free to let me know and we can change it!

Thanks! I actually think yours is a little cleaner to read; I'll eventually try to edit my flowchart to make it cleaner and combine our approaches, but yeah.

And no, I didn't make it! I only publicly joined the community late. Sounds like a plan though!

Oh my gosh that's hilarious. I actually had already drafted a message similar to your initial one (partially hence the "read my thoughts"), only to find that I'd been beat :P

Here's my flowchart! Internet be slow right now, and I'm not sure that speedrun.com will let me upload a photo, so here's a drive link to be safe: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zt_gA-eR_0GiA9oQ5C4Yir3tnkdKMl4l/view?usp=sharing

Still a WIP like I said; I'll fact check my work with yours, and complete it for the sake of completeness.

If you're good with it, I'll try to submit a run for a new speedrun board soon. If we end up not needing it, we can just delete it. And I like your idea of linking games, that seems like a good compromise between the two approaches!

Read my thoughts almost entirely!

I agree that the secret ending feels redundant as a category. It's basically just the first 60% of the Challenge Level Ending route with no changes (which I've been calling the Doughnut ending, but Challenge Level Ending is more explanatory), so yeah.

Also, I've started compiling some resources to make running the game easier. The biggest one is a level flowchart of the game to make routing easier (still a WIP, but usable at this point), and otherwise I've found a small bit of movement tech I wanted to share. Plan was to make a new forum for tips/tricks that people could add onto with their own discoveries- would y'all be okay with that format, or do you have any other ideas for how we could organize that?

The only other comment I have is that I still think the PC game is essentially totally different from the 3DS one- to me, it basically feels like big reimagining of the game, if not just an entirely new Harold experience. It would feel marginally weird to put the games' speedruns together, but it's not a big deal at all, especially if it's only me who feels that way. Besides, putting them together could potentially ignite more competition on the 3DS boards, which would be nice!

I'll start doing some runs soon, and then submit 'em whenever we get more infrastructure on here. :)

Sounds good! And if I may ask- without getting into specifics, what do you mean by "I won't say too much of what I know"? Do you know more about this game then the general public somehow?

(I of course won't ask what you actually know, secret information is meant to be secret for a reason :] Just slightly befuddled by your words.)

Ooh, that's a good idea! Just to verify- you're saying that we should make a completely separate board for the PC version and have different endings as categories?

I also think it'd be important to have a 100% category where you get all collectables/endings, but yeah, we should probably just wait until the game comes out to decide for sure. :)

Relatedly- would you like to communicate about this again when the game comes out? I definitely intend to submit runs too and it'd be nice to be coordinated before we make new boards or anything.

After playing the demo (there's a demo out, btw!) the changes appear to be quite significant. I feel like it somewhat blurs the line between a remake and a reimagining, though I'd lean more towards the latter to describe it.

There's too many changes to note here in full, but long story short there seem to be a LOT of new levels (there's 100 crowns instead of 3DS's 30) and most of the old levels have notable differences that change how they play. (There also appear to be multiple paths though the game now, though that's just speculation.) Since all the levels are new or different to some extent, I expect speedruns will probably either need a separate ruleset on here or just their own board entirely. I'd be curious to hear what y'all think, though! :)

It also sounds like the PC version will have exclusive content (which I can only assume means more levels), so a new board would probably be for the best.

Thank you! Yeah, it's a super fun trick. :)