Hi new speedrunner here. Im really interested in this game and i have been playing for roughly 18 hours. Serched the game up on speedrun.com and found this. Im wondering when categories are coming and what they are going to be.
Still looking for category suggestions. I think the routing/sequence breaking is the most interesting part of the game so the most interesting categories IMO are the ones where the routing is totally up in the air.
Some suggestions have been:
- all friends or all exhibits
- endsoftheearth% (escape out the north/south/east/west ends of the map)
- low% (fewest islands, though it may end up being the same as any%)
- swamp% (reach a specific island at the end of the swamp, then finish the game)
I'm also fascinated by different speedrun ideas for this game. I like the ones you have so far.
What about: title screen % (timer stops when cut scene starts) popcorn and/or coffee stand All postboxes
My thoughts on some categories: given how fast any% is, any category that involves getting somewhere and then finishing the game would almost definitely involve the any% setup to finish- essentially putting two runs in a row- and so I don't think it would be a particularly interesting category. That doesn't make the non-any% part a bad idea to me, however- I just think that it would be better served as a miscellaneous category that doesn't need to finish the game. The swamp island and leaving the map in all directions would fall under this, I think.
For categories other than any%/low%/100%, I think the way to go would be: Any% no major skips (follow the natural progression of archipelagos to reach the end of the game) All Exhibits (beat the game with reading all exhibits) All Friends (beat the game with all friends, might be too similar to 100%, depending on how the routing shakes out) And I think that probably covers the range of meaningful categories. All coffee/popcorn/benches might be good as well?
"No reset" sounds like it would be a better version of "no major skips" since there would be no need to argue over which skips are developer-intended. It might open up the possibility of sequence breaks but that would be pretty fascinating if they were found. I'm like 90% sure reset is not required to beat the game via the standard routes but somebody correct me if that's not right.
"All coffee/popcorn/bench" sounds like a fun category. One comment: Draknek mentioned in his Discord that he'd wanted to add a few more of them during the beta but never got around to it, so maybe we should wait and see if they're coming in a patch or if the current ones are confirmed to be final.
For any other categories mentioned above, if somebody records a run, I will happily add the category (ping me on Discord).