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Speedrunning is a beautiful game living within every game. I love it. But not every game is equally speedrun friendly. Getting into high-end speedrunning is daunting. It's a time sink and can be extremely frustrating if a few design decisions go the wrong way. You can design a game to be more speedrun friendly, though, and to more of your game's players than you might think. Let's talk about how you can design a game to give the thrill of The Run to everyone!
Featuring:
Neon White go play it now
Celeste
Demon Turf
Stuntman
Elden Ring
Fire Emblem
Goldeneye
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#neonwhite #gamedesign #celeste
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You failed to understand the power randomness also lends to speedrunning with the game you highlighted during that segment, Hades. Rougelike games of this style are speedrun bc of the randomness. Its exciting to see what seed you will get and what items you get along the way. You are forced to adapt and need to know everything there is to know about item synergy and game mechanics. Instead of just knowing the precise route from a-b everytime and repeating the exact same movements this instead is a surpise for the runner and the viewer not knowing what they will be put up against.
One of the things that kept me playing Mario Kart 7 was being able to race against random ghosts that have better times than you and it was my goal to take some of those courses to their absolute maximum and for one of them, it ran out of ghosts to give me so I felt like I had one of the fastest times. That feeling was so great
now you are the ghost
Which course did you run out of ghosts for?
@@lukemagnotta7338 Mala Wuhu which was the Mountain Wuhu Island track where it was a single lap race. I only started doing it cause I enjoyed the track and was messing around in time trial and then saw the ghost do the death skip where you drive off the edge and went "Wait why did it teleport" and then immediately was hooked in trying to lower the time even further.
@@PokeHearts Giving you a rival that's just a little ahead of your score/speed is perfect. Only having the best in the world to aim at is off putting! Good job breaking every record on that track and it's a great example for this video on accessibility of competitive scoring (well speed running specifically but) since you even get to watch their techniques!
In mario kart ds I felt so proud of myself as a kid when I beat all the dev times in the trials. Like “woah I’m better than the developers!” Also it was nice how the trials taught me shortcuts
I really like Celeste speedrunning due to the fact that it doesn’t lock the advanced techniques (wavedashing, dashjumping from a block, etc.) away until the endgame. You have them from the beginning, they’re just kept secret until the end, but if you know of them already for a speed run, or if you just like to mess around with physics, then you can use them to speed up certain parts a lot.
Celeste is the perfect game for speedrunning
@@lucasmiguel1508 Couldn’t agree more
Neon White does such a perfect job of slowly easing you into speedrunning. It's the first time in a game I've felt not overwhelmed digging into the more subtle and nuanced techs that are necessary to perfect your run. I don't really consider myself a speedrunner, and yet I keep playing to push myself to go faster and faster, and I've managed to get pretty high on the leaderboards.
It definitely helps that the general movement feel in that game is god tier. I knew I was gonna love Neon White when I was only halfway through the "tutorial" world just from how good running & jumping felt.
An important thing to remember is that you should make a game with being GOOD first in mind. Being speedrun friendly is cool and all, but if the game isn't any good, then who's gonna run it?
To be fair, Sonic 06 speedrunning is fairly popular
Preach. The best speedruns are fantastic games with many restrictions but with underlying mechanics that can break open a game, glitches or not.
But how to make the game good….
You'll be surprised
People run bad games all the time... This also doesn't really matter, like...yes, obviously people want the game to be good first. It doesn't need to be said.
For skipping cutscenes, make option in settings(or easy to access option) that skips all cutscenes automatically(in other words, dont play cutscenes at all). No need for holding the button for both regular player and speedrunner.
This works better for some games than others. For a game light on story it makes sense to skip cutscenes if you're on a repeat play or trying to get a high score on a stage. A player repeating story-heavy games like RPGs will usually want those cutscenes to play with the additional option to skip if they're repeating an area or fight over and over. Those aren't normally intended to be repeated multiple times in a single run. Most casual players in a story-intensive game wouldn't have a use for it. So, I could see it being in secondary settings with some other speedrun friendly optimizations.
@@BonaparteBardithion i definitely see it being a useful setting to have, and anyone who wants the story can leave the cutscenes in. (Although have an option to skip integrated to each cutscene for when you are on your 5th attempt of a boss this run and are sick of his monologue.) Besides, i assume most games will already have a way to disable them for when devs are debugging and don't feel like dealing with the cutscenes.
Sometimes it's actually nice to have some cutscenes. I've done a few runs of Mario Odyssey, and it's nice to be able to have a short breather in-between kingdoms. At the same time, there are a shit-ton of cutscenes in that game that waste so much time. As with anything, the best option would be one with granularity It's also really annoying to skip cutscenes in that game, for the ones you can skip at all, that is. There are multiple chains of a few successive cutscenes which the game has you skip individually, and you have to confirm the skip each time.
You make a game idiot-proof, and they'll make a better idiot. I wouldn't trust players to not disable cutscenes and then complain that they've missed some critical gameplay or story detail in doing so. I'd gate the option behind a password you have to acquire by beating the game once, and then make all cutscenes skippable individually from the get-go, with a further option to replay them from a menu somewhere. That way players have no excuse for not having a piece of info. If you want to be extra cheeky (and also patronizing) you can have the game tutorialize using the cutscene replay feature in a fourth wall-breaking meta moment. Have the game skip a scene for you early on and then go, "Oh shoot, did you want to see that? Well you can watch it if you go into this menu right here..." and the skipped scene can reveal a 4-digit door code or something you need to open a door early on. On replays you already know the code and don't have to watch the scene, and on first plays you're forced to learn exactly how you can undo a poorly judged cutscene skip. From then on all the tutorials and major story beats can live inside skippable cutscenes, with the only unskippable one being a 5-second clip showing how to replay cutscenes, including the one unskippable one itself. There will still be a few people who somehow miss those five seconds because they aren't paying attention, and for those people a message can appear on-screen after they've messed around in the code room for long enough.
@@jasonreed7522 "Sick of his monologue" -- something I've done in my small projects and something I notice a couple of devs do in theirs, is to put a big monologue the first time you encounter the boss, and then a simple line -- something like "Oh, you're back?" -- on repeats. Maybe even a funny / jokey one if you _keep_ coming back after the umpteenth try
One of the first games I think of when I think of designing for speedrunners is A Hat in Time. In addition to some menu features that are available if you toggle them, there is one area where there used to be a very technical, very difficult skip that could advance past an entire area very quickly. When the developers saw this glitch, rather than making it impossible, they codified it by making it so if you simply walked into the space the speedrunners were using, you'd skip the area just like the glitch. First-time players still wouldn't know it was there because the spot is visibly occluded and not somewhere a player would naturally think to go in most cases, but anyone aware of it can easily and effortlessly bypass that very slow (and also very scary) area.
I remember finding that skip in Vanessa's manor. I was mind blown. One of my favorite games of all time. I was thinking about speedrunning it for a while now.
A Hat In Time is VERY speedrunner friendly and I love that about it. Several in-game timer modes, the option to instantly skip all cutscenes, they even keep older versions around using Steam's beta branch feature for people who run on those versions
I didn't use the skip for speedrunning, I use it because Vanessa is scary
The thing with RNG and speedrunning is, games with lots of randomness can actually be very popular with speedrunners. Just look at how many "randomizers" are done at GDQ. High-RNG games can be a fun test of adapting to what the RNG gives you in order to get the best time you can. They can also have a sort of addictive "gambling" feel of hoping that the next run will be THE RUN with god-tier RNG. And they are very popular for live races, especially if you can make sure all players have the same "seed" so that each player's randomized output is as close to the same as possible. I think where RNG gets annoying is when only a small part of the run relies on it, and the rest is much more reliant on execution. Then, it can feel like you're executing everything perfectly and get screwed over because of bad RNG. At least in an RNG-heavy game, your expectations are adjusted to account for randomness and so losing a run to RNG feels more "normalized".
I would add one thing as a speedrunner (and also I'm happy you showed marble it up! That game has some really tough skips), it's not a rule to be followed 100%, but many devs, when thinking about speedruns, make very linear games thinking that the best thing is to make it so the runner has to worry about nothing but pure execution, well those kind of games become stale fast (unless some glitches or unintended things are found), speedrunning is also a puzzle where you want to find what works best, which levels to play to unlock the next world, which upgrades to get to make the rest of the game faster, it's all about trying to weight many factors and it can be pretty fun, and a game like this will often see some speedrunning revolutions. Oh yeah and copy mario games where the set of movements is not incredibly big, you have like 4 actions, but by chaining them toghether you can get so many different results.
This! Running a well-refined route will usually be very linear, even for a more open game. But making a game less linear can have some really interesting consequences. I run Solar Ash and the last main biome is especially good for speedrunning because it has multiple routes (especially in glitched runs) that you can take through the area. Of course one will be optimal if you are consistent enough to execute it, but what's nice is that your route might vary from run to run. Your launch didn't fling you far enough to reach point A? Start with point B instead, there's a fast backup route for that. Died near point D? Improvise. I suppose roguelites like Dead Cells are at an extreme end of this spectrum, where every run is always adapting the route on the fly. That can be enticing to some runners
I'd also like to add that offering incentives to engage with speedrunning your game can be a good way to entice the player to at least give it a try. Mario Kart 8's Gold Wheels are inconsequential enough to never feel like a required unlock, but they do a good job at encourging players that would otherwise never even touch Time Trials to give it a try. Metroid Zero Mission's different end screens based on completion % and time likewise encourage the player to optmize their route on repeat playthoughs without ever feeling like the game is forcing you to speedrun to get the full experince.
THATS HOW YOU GET GOLD WHEELS??? I TRIED SO HARD AND COULDNT FIGURE IT OUT SINCE IT DIDNT TELL ME ;-;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
This because this was the only reason I did time trial. But I’m glad I did because I did learn a short cut or 2 from the devs.
Shout out for Metroid Zero Mission! It's the only game I'd say I speed-runned, and it's all because of the different end screens for fast and low completion percentage runs.
your opening line "I love speedruns, well WATCHING speedruns" made me realize I do not, but I watch and love every SummoningSalt and RWhiteGoose. Riddle me that.
Those are well made documentaries. At least SummoningSalt is, I'm not familiar with RWhiteGoose's content.
neon white is such a goated game yes, the story and dialogue too
I agree. You see, what a lot of people are missing is that Neon White isn't just cringe for the sake of it - no, it embraces it wholeheartedly. It's all delivered with sincerity. The dialogue is like that because this game is trying to evoke a Dreamcast vibe that it nails perfectly. You know that meme, "do not kill the part of you that is cringe, kill the part that cringes"? That's Neon White.
@@kaistephens2694 i wholeheartedly disagree, yes it was sincere but it doesnt make it any less cringe inducing
@@hostilegamingz To be fair, at no point did they deny its cringiness lol
@@kaistephens2694 tbh i kinda enjoy how "cringe" it is
@@hostilegamingz because, as op tried to say, that is the entire point. The game's dialogue is designed from top to bottom to be as cringe inducing as they could make it while still actually delivering some consistent story, dialogue, and character growth, cringe culture be fucking damned. It is absolutely shameless in doing so, and doesn't care, which fits considering that white's characterization is literally "Golden Retriever Hot Topic Wannabe. If you cringe at the game, good, they succeeded. And the point of it is that it's so cringy and self-aware that it loops back around into being genuinely hillarious.
One of my favorite speedrun friendly games is Katana Zero, there's so many options, like cutting out all the cutscenes in the game, including extra content you would get from specific choices you do, and a whole ton of other things
Katana Zero is just an amazing game overall, can't wait for the DLC to come out. If you're reading this and have money go buy Katana Zero right now I guarantee you will love it
@@anirishgoose Oh absolutely, it's a fucking great time
YES!!! The only game I’ve speedrun to this day, and I still enjoy it
@@gabrielgalvis6697 Same
Something else about Celeste’s tutorial is that you can skip the dash tutorial via the skip cutscene button.
13:43 One thing you didn't mention is something I saw in CyberHook, a country wide leaderboard. I live in a smaller country, so I always tried to get at least top 5 and sometimes first. It was really rewarding and didn't require tons of time. Games with a bigger player count can do even many smaller geographic divisions sothat you have the feeling that your beating real people who you could actually meet on the street
Yes! It's the same in Subway Surfers. I live in a country that doesn't seem to have a huge amount of players on the leaderboard, but there are enough that it's not just a handful of people always falling into the same slots. And I'm proud to say that when I remember to play, I tend to be one of the top players in the country! It's a very fun "fun fact" to pull out.
For me, Katana ZERO did a really good job of being speedrun friendly. It has a standalone speedrun mode on the main menu that automatically skips all cutscenes and replays, making it so easy to just sit down once and beat your own record.
The only game I've ever speedran, I wasnt that good, but it was fun.
@@SynergyGaming112 And thats how you know its a good game, "I wasn't that good, but it was fun".
This really makes you think how some games were obviously designed with speed-running in mind and not as an afterthought! One point I do not quite agree with is RNG. Sure, common elements are needed in each run, but I think in certain games (e.g., Spelunky, Dead Cells, or even Minecraft, in increasing order of RNG) that is precisely the aspect that makes them interesting to speed-run (and friendly). Though, indeed, not all games can make use of it. A good game that nails this balance I'd say perfectly is Peggle. While the layout of each level is the same, the orange and green pegs change positions and the purple ones are random every shot. This way, you know what to expect, but the game can still be brutal with awkward placements of key pegs. At any rate, great video (and love letter to Neon White)!
I would point out how many Speedrun games have randomizers made by the community. It's a test of how fast you can get through a game you know well with intentionally limited equipment.
Minecraft lets you control the randomness with the seed mechanic. (Lets the player control the seed for the RNG vs having the devs or some other factor like time set the seed) This makes seed hunting an important aspect of Minecraft speed runs. And many games have fan made randomizers that can be run with separate leaderboards. The point of these is not to test how good at being a robot you are (a game with 0 randomness has a frame perfect solution that technically every runner is trying to find and perform), instead the randomness lets you test how adaptable you are to an unkown level with runner level skills.
It depends on how the RNG is implemented; there should always be some degree of control. In the case of roguelites or randomizer mods, there is always a seed in the level generation so that even if everything is randomly placed two players can still run the exact same map. The players still have to improvise, but within the scope of the randomizer the competition is fair because they are reacting to the same randomly generated level. RNG gets problematic when two competing players running the same game with the same seed with the same level of skill can still have their times impacted by pure luck. If two players are neck and neck in a race, and player A is handed a win because player B's final boss randomly took 4 hits to kill instead of 2, that isn't satisfying for anyone. My ideal speedrunning game would randomly select from elements that all take the exact same amount of time to complete. Little changes like whether a boss swings with its right arm or left, whether the player has to jump or slide to avoid an obstacle, etc, so that every run is mathematically fair but players still have to react on the fly.
RNG basically means that regardless of skill some are more advantaged.
Another good example of balanced RNG is Cuphead. All the bosses have a pool of attacks they can pick from. Which one they pick is random, but it’s easy to react to. The game is heavily focused on dodging, so the RNG here is just enough to keep fights interesting
Titanfall 2 is my favorite speedrun. It has a lot of skill based fast movement. It also has skips and tricks, but it's not an out of bounds fest. It has one autoscroller section and the cutscenes are not skippable. But then again, it's really intense. When I'm practicing, I use a mod that skips them, but for serious runs, I actually like and need the breather I get from cutscenes.
I feel like the unacknowledged conclusion this should have reached is that not all games _should_ be designed to be speedrun friendly. The RNG section alone is a great example of this, where taking it out would fundamentally alter the experience, especially when you're using roguelikes as some of your examples. Making all cutscenes skippable doesn't seem like it should be a high priority for games where telling a story is the primary goal, either. It takes out an extra variable, too, since someone isn't going to beat your run solely because they're better at skipping cutscenes than you are. The whole Stuntman example is weird too, since you seemed to already provide reasons _why_ retrying within a scene would be discouraged, since you have the entire production riding on you getting the whole thing right all at once. Like, that feels like it's kind of the point, working for a perfect run of the whole scene. You're already not doing much of a speedrun if you have to restart a level multiple times, that's all only going to matter in the practice. Some games are better off being Speedrun At Your Own Risk, because dedication to the game is already a fundamental part of speedrunning.
I'm not a speedrunner, but Neon White makes me feel like one. Sometimes during my first playthrough I would get stuck on one level for 10+ minutes not because I couldn't beat it, but because I wanted to beat my personal highscore or get higher on the leaderboard. Yesterday, I finally completed White's Hell Rush, and it brought me so much joy. Now gotta grind to complete Mikey's Hell Rush, because it changes so much, you have to come up with new strats and play differently having all the cards swapped for rocket launchers
i was so happy taking the neon white ride. i was immediately impressed by how good the **music** was. machine girl did a absolutely phenominal job keeping my ears boppin while i was grinding times. I managed to get full non-red ace medals for all but i think 2 boss fights. the story was actually really enjoyable for me even with the dialogue. steve blum as white was super endearing and i loved his emo-nerd persona. overall, the game deserves all the love and attention its been getting and ive seen actual speed runners tackle it and my jaw never leaves the floor with how insane they are. overall, its probably a one-of-a-kind game that we wont see another for a long while to come.
And to think it came from the same devs that made donut county. Absolutely love it when devs make a risky change for the better and have the skill and dedication to pull it off. Speaking of speedrunners, I saw a clip recently of the first Green fight where he literally never jumped in the whole level and still got a faster time than me. Insane.
Celeste (which you did show) is a great speed running game. It’s basically designed as a speed running game but it’s also for more casual players. I haven’t really gotten into speedrunning Celeste, but there’s so much movement tech that I love about it that makes playing it so much more fun.
I think that RNG can be good for speedruns as well as bad. If it's a tiny detail that's make-or-break for speedruns, that's quite annoying. But if it's a core part of the game, runners are already prepared to accept the RNG, and it can really make the strategies more interesting. For example, games like Pikmin 2 and Minecraft have very active speedrun communities with very interesting tech and strategies, because every run is different
The in-game timer is a big thing on PC, where the load times might vary a lot between players' setups. Also, options like disabling music are nice - otherwise speedrunners are sentenced to hearing a soundtrack way past the point of enjoyment.
Alternately, use this video to come up with ways to troll speedrunners. Have random length fades in and out. Have unskippable animations, make your game an RPG, have your mandatory tutorial ask if you want to repeat the tutorial and have yes highlighted by default and there be a low chance for yes to be automatically selected again each frame. Have a random 1 frame to 10 second buffer between the credits and end screen. Tie progression to talking to an NPC that only randomly let's you proceed. Have forced online sections be necessary to complete the game. Make everything a gacha. Allow enemies to confuse/paralyze the whole party and keep them locked in that state.
Seems like whether RNG is good or bad for speedrunning is mostly determined by what options the game has to mitigate bad luck. It's extremely satisfying to watch a great runner adapt and make quick decisions on the fly to deal with an unexpected situation.
Absolutely. If you can get around bad luck with superior skill, then of course thats so much better than seeing someone flip a coin and saying "well damn, guess this run is dead".
Babe, wake up! New Design doc just dropped 👌🙌
You should watch the devs reactions to the WR heaven rush. Even they're shocked at what kind of tech people have discovered.
You showed a lot of footage from Crash Bandicoot in this video, and I think it does a pretty good job of easing people into speedrunning. The Time Trial mode introduces Time Crates that stop the clock for a few seconds, which encourages players to try and break as many as they can - helping to ease a player in by using a mechanic they're likely already familiar with. The Time Crates can also assist players with pathing with how they're placed, and some are even placed within some tricky setups that introduce players to advanced techniques as they work out how to safely break them. Secondly, Time Trial mode doesn't just offer a Relic for completing it, but different tiers of Relics depending on the time you ended up with. Sapphire Relics are the easiest, and in their debut in Crash 3, they unlock the 5 secret levels, so someone who's new to the concept of speedrunning and at least making an effort to try can unlock all the content. However, if you want to truly complete the game 100%, you're encouraged to go after the Gold Relics. They're harder than Sapphire, but not too difficult for most players. Plus, if you're committed to 100% completion, you'll have likely learned enough about each level from trying to get the gems to figure out how to optimise your time enough to get all the Gold Relics, and with them the final gem in the game. And then, for those who really like it and are craving a challenge, there's the Platinum Relics - the hardest Relics in the game, purely serving as a bragging right for those who earn them. Not every level or game in the series does this perfectly, but I think these are some good ideas to help introduce players to speedrunning. By utilising familiar mechanics in a different manner, it shows how speedrunning can be a different experience to the core game, and the 3 tiers of Relic give players new goals to aspire to, which helps to increase replay value. Maybe you got that Sapphire pretty easily, so you run the stage again for Gold, and then you might get it and find that you weren't too far off Platinum, so you're encouraged to go again...and again, and again, and again, because my word, can some of these Platinum Relics be brutal.
I think Pikmin represents a game all about casual speedrunning. The game is basically an RTS, it has a time limit of 30days and is easier the faster you go. I think it also tracks playtime among other stats, but the obvious stat to use is days spent in game. (The record is at the minimum of 6days for 5 areas and having a tutorial that won't let you get the other part forcing a return) Its also satisfying to get an area down to completing in 1 day, and its unsatisfying to lose. (Pikmin deaths take a piece of your soul, its amazing what 1 ghost animation and 1 sound effect can do) All in all its a great intro to speed running for a game from the gamecube with no integrated tools to enable speed running. (Its similar to sunshine in being accidentally great for speedrunning)
Honestly, Neon White is such a fun game. Especially with the fact that me and my brother are playing through it alongside each other, meaning we're both constantly butting heads to try and beat the other persons times though. I definitely didn't go beat all of his scores while he was at work recently though, that couldn't be me at all (spoiler I did just that and now I have red aces on every level 1-20, with level 20 having me placed within the top 500. Gotta say I'm proud of that one).
Thanks for this great list! also thanks for including that warning as it;'s very true I've seen countless games chase Esports and Speed running just to get abandoned or forgotten when that does not happen as they forgot to make a game for normal gamers first then add Speedrun freindly bits. As for me... I may be making a Speed run friendly game in vanalla RPG maker just by making the best RPG maker game I can make.
And well, there's good Speedrun games who are just TERRIBLE, and them there's bad speedrun games who are amazing. Sonic 06 is a more speedrun-friendly game than Galaxy, but we all know that Galaxy is great at worst while 06 is awful period.
for me, one case of RNG making speedrunning more interesting is the Knuckles/Rouge levels in both Sonic Adventure games. For those who don't know the mechanics, the treasure hunt levels have you find 3 key items randomly hidden in sandbox areas (most are small... then you have the space levels in 2). For first time players, you'll be abusing the Tikal/monitor hints to find all 3 items. However, getting all missions in 1 or A ranks in 2 requires you to not use hints (ranks in 2 for these are based on the bonus points you get for finding them fast & on your own). You might be wondering "hey how the fuck am I supposed to find them without hints if they change every time". Memorization. The 3 spots you have each run are picked from a pool of I wanna say 6 or 7 spots, so as you play the levels, you can start knowing where the spawns are & just start sweeping the levels in an efficient manner using the radar's hot/cold system (and hoping one of them in Dry Lagoon isn't the "ride the turtle through the current" spot)
I appreciate that most of the thing you mentioned are just general best practices in game design.
From what I know I can say... their amazing mechanics and beautiful movement 💗
One option for cutscenes or tutorials is to make them unskipable for the first playthrough, but then have them be optional for all subsequent playthroughs.
One extra item that makes a game speedrun friendly is providing problems not puzzles in the level design. This was hinted at, but not explicitly stated a couple times in the video. If an obstacle can be tackled in multiple ways, it provides interesting routing options for the speedrunner. This isn't so much about providing explicit alternate paths, but leaving leeway for advanced techniques to skip small portions of the main route. Allowing for multiple solutions also benefits the casual playthrough since it provides an opportunity for the player to feel smart by catching a non-obvious option for proceeding.
Glad to see you talking about Neon White! I just finished the game about an hour before you posted this video, haha
My favorite speedrun categories are the meme ones, they are so crazy and need to do such unbelievable stuff is hilarious. And also the Low% that break the game mechanics as much as possible to beat it with the lowest percentage possible even if that cost you 12h extra time.
There's a reason Super Metroid is one of the progenitors of speedrunning. It just complements the base game so beautifully and makes it still feel fresh even after hundreds of playthroughs. And at least in my case it all came so naturally: First you play the game and find it really hard and kind of clunky, but atmospheric and memorable otherwise. Later you try the game again and remember that the game taught you about wall-jumping. You try that in a couple of places and notice that you can skip lengthy passages and get some items out of order. Then you watch a couple of videos and notice that there's a relatively simple movement tech called mockball that can skip one of the first bosses early. You try it a few times with varying success until you manage to skip that boss. And then you notice that you can do that movement everywhere and when performed correctly it feels really smooth, natural and just kinetically satisfying. The same pleasure one might get for playing an instrument in rhythm. And then you notice that you want to learn about the individual rooms and notice that there's so many little things that you can do. How you can optimize the jumping by grabbing ledges, how you can move through certain blocks by performing weird animation , how you can fly through rooms by taking damage from enemies. There's always something new to learn and incorporate into your muscle memory.
Nice video! I liked the examples used, and the points about being able to skip tutorials and cutscenes, or have the game hint at where to go to run a level more quickly. However, I think one more thing that games need to do here is not punish the player too harshly for trying something different, or leaving the intended path. Paper Mario Color Splash is an example of a game that does that wrong on all counts. Not only are the boss battles designed around a particular item you have no choice other than to have/use (limiting experimentation with strats), but the game outright kills Mario instantly if he ends up out of bounds at all. As a result, you are very heavily restricted in how you can tackle the game, and more advanced skips/speedrun strats are often just not possible at all. I also think the Great Plateau in Zelda Breath of the Wild might be an example of how a game's design can affect speedrunning. On the one hand, it's a great tutorial; it's very freeform, lets you experiment with the game's core systems, etc. It's a masterpiece of design in that sense. But it's also mandatory on every playthrough, and the requirements to leave it basically put a 30 or so minute bit of padding at the start of every attempt. Speedrunners can try interesting things to reach the shrines there more quickly, or skip certain cutscenes, but at the end of the day they NEED to get 4 Spirit Orbs, to speak to the king, to get the Paraglider, etc to even reach the point where they can truly experiment with the game and its systems. That basically puts a floor on how low speedrun times for the game can get, and makes any% rather unforgiving as a result.
Great video, keep the good work man👍🏼
I think one thing you could have also gone over is how glitches and exploits are used in speedruns. Speedrunning is in essence the player picking apart the game to figure out the path of least resistance. That includes abusing glitches and the like to cut past areas in ways never intended. Pikmin comes to mind in that. Lots of collition and map glitches are discovered in the game, and are often left there on purpose by the developers for speedrunners to make use of. It's not something they did on purpose, but it's something they know players will figure out how to use, and leave it in as is as a result. Hollow Knight also has such exploits. A very common and early one that comes to mind is how in the earliest part of Greenpath, you can use Vengeful Spirit to stall your fall enough to reach a ledge you normally shouldn't reach. It's an exploit players can discover, but is left as is by the designers for their sake. Designing for speedrunning, at its core, is not about designing the game specifically for the speedrunner, but about making sure you leave the tools they can use to pick apart the game at their leasure, and figure out the best path on their own.
Oh... the momentum gained from bombs from machine guns is actually stacking, so you can shoot it double under yourself to get even higher/faster... I thought it didn't because it didn't work for me when I tried it once, so I was just shooting it at walls and bouncing off those explosions... yeah, makes sense... Love the fact that my approach was just as legit, since I aced every level.
I think that getting the cognitive aspect of speedrunning to feel like a natural part of the game is probably Neon White's single greatest achievement, since it takes the focus off the mechanics (which take time and effort to improve once you've gotten used to the game) and onto the pathing (which is more frequently rewarding). The desire to get bet better times leads you to start questioning your preconceptions about the level, examining it from new angles and asking questions about the design. In nearly every level, enemy placement or architecture can give you a clue in regards to the developer-intended shortcut without the explicit hint. Then, in some levels, they'll leave a less obvious, but still fairly easy to find, intended strat that isn't the hint in order to make you feel clever once you find it. And then, feeling like you got one over on the devs by getting a red time (especially if it's through a clever route instead of constant practice) is a high that few games can ever hope to provide. It helps build an intrinsic reward system, driving you to go for better and better times without giving you any actual reason to do so. And that's vital to speedrunning, since, outside of the best of the best (in games that people care about), it's very rarely going to provide any form of reward beyond personal satisfaction. Instilling that sense of satisfaction as a natural part of the gameplay process is a hell an accomplishment.
Ghosts are a very good way to create a rivalry not with your friends, but with yourself. If you know exactly what you did in your previous run, you can make it a lot easier to achieve a new personal best.
I think it's worth mentioning Axiom Verge, which has a dedicated speedrun mode that eliminates all story elements and item descriptions, along with an in game timer that will give you splits for each boss
Okay, so I have some experience with game development and writing enemy AI. My goal with enemy design was to give common enemies entirely predictable patterns while the _bosses_ had patterns that felt random. The truth is they weren't random at all. The game had zero RNG. Instead, I wrote a formula to choose an action based on your position and the enemy's position. It was deliberately unintuitive. To the common player, it felt random. However, to a speedrunner with higher consistency, it would be noticeable that the bosses always choose the same actions given the same input. Essentially, I had built in RNG manipulation.
I loved to see the clips of Marble It Up! hidden in there. A pleasant surprise to see my favorite speedgame.
A game I'm currently doing a casual playthrough off and already notice quite a few good for speedrunning design decisions is "Little WItch in the Woords", a game about collecting ingredients from the forrest around your house and putting them into potions, then using them to help people. A few times now I just already had the potion I needed to keep going and skipped backtracking from that. And a few times the game acknowledges that. Something I haven't actually tested yet but I'd suspect would be possible is making the potions without the recipe. And of course you can just pre collect ingredients for potions you will only need later on. While all in all I suspect the game to be quite weird to route optimally, I do look forward to when I will end up running this.
One of my favorite speedrun experiences is centered around one of my friend's nephews. He's I think 6 or so and every so often makes a bunch of Mario Maker 2 levels. Since the levels aren't particularly good there's no one else really playing them but my friends compete for the speedrun record on them and try to make it so that as many of them as possible have a world record set by one of us.
Interesting how a game that's usually bad for speedrunning is enjoyable if you speedrun it non-standardly. I think Mario Maker 2 is a bad speedrun game as a whole due to the sheer amount of downtime you have to go through between the levels themselves.
Another thing that is quite underrated is when the game leaves you breadcrumbs to follow and makes you see that there's much more to the game, in terms of mechanics and techniques. You alluded at celeste's b, c sides and strawberries but I think having a timer/ranking at the end of a stage/level (like with cuphead or dmc) can be a real motivator to start practising your skills and eventually maybe delve into advanced stuff discussed in online speedrunning communities. Edit: oh whoops didn't watch the neon white section yet lol. Glad to see we're on the same page!
i think it’s worth mentioning metroid dread’s boss rush mode. it’s a mode that you unlock after clearing the game once ,and involves fighting every boss in successive order with no cutscenes, nothing in between, and it’s complete with a timer and allows you to practice each individual boss once you’ve beaten them. only thing is, no leaderboard.
having quick retries is a QOL improvement i think any game can benefit from. i get frustrated easily, and my dexterity sucks due to disability, so the ability to jump back into the action quickly can make or break a game for me. i discovered i really like roguelikes, and it took a while to figure out why the hell someone with my short fuse would get so into them. turns out it's the fact that you're *meant* to keep failing that's the key! they make starting a new run quick and easy, so the action hardly stops. you get back up, grab your gear and keep going! i'll sink hundreds of hours into dead cells and hades, but a platformer without generous autosaves will make me rage-quit within minutes
As a somewhat casual speedrunner, I loved this video. I've ran StS and Hades, and some of the mods for hades to reduce arbitrary resets early on are a great supplement.
I really like doing time trials in crash team racing and to a lesser extent, mario kart. Something about doing the race tracks over and over has always been fun for me. Outside of them I do like watching speed runs here and there. The single monster runs in monster hunter where they can do all the prep to make the perfect weapon and sets, or even the full game speed runs of games like metroid or even jrpg's like xenoblade torna the golden country. They have always been entertaining to watch.
In the case of Crosscode there are the dungeon races, an in-universe equivalent of video game players trying to beat a section of a game faster than the other. You're not expected to beat the Emilie (the hidden timer) on your first playthrough but if you can then you get a few really rewarding bits of dialogue that you would never see otherwise. One of the only ways I've seen speedrunning have a kind of in lore explanation which is neat.
It also has skippable cutscenes, very short retry turnaround, since dying almost instantly respawns you at the start of the current room, and very little RNG. It also has plenty of tech to do small skips or just move faster. There's running, there's dashing 3 times before needing to pause, and then there's holding down the shield button while spamming dash to quickly get just about anywhere. The longjump, aka "JADC" is actually referenced in the game itself in one of the sidequests, and is pretty much the first major piece of tech to learn when starting speedrunning. And then there's breaking the game's reality with save-storage allowing you to wrong-warp past most story barriers, including letting you clip into the DLC epilogue as early as Chapter 3. The game then has a specific mechanic for when you do major sequence breaks to let you salvage a potentially broken save, which can be used to quickly reach Ba'kii Kum by triggering a story event from Chapter 6.
@@angeldude101 I absolutely adore that the JADC is part of what the game itself teaches you (and just before my personal favourite boss as well).
I'll never do a speedrun, but I love watching people attempt them. I love how speedrunning can be applied to every game, and I think it's beautiful seeing people pushing games to their limits.
And there are 2 types of speedruns. Type 1 are like pikmin or pokemon where you mostly stick to intended mechanics and paths, this just looks like playing the game really well. Type 2 are like Portal 1, where you exploit so many glitches and probably know the code better than the devs, these runs do not look like someone expertly playing the game, they barely look like playing the game at all. (Portal's record is around 10mins, Portal 2's is over 50mins because most of the glitches got fixed) I personally really like watching type 1 speedruns because they help explain how to be better at the game as a casual, type 2 runs are a spectacle but not useful for improving your own skills.
@@jasonreed7522 Yeah, it can be amazing to see the creative and technically impressive ways that speedrunners exploit bugs. But at a certain point, such tricks are so overwhelming that the gameplay becomes far removed from the thing that I found appealing about the game in the first place. That's why I generally prefer to watch and perform glitchess runs. and runs that retain the spirit of the gameplay that attracted me to the game back when I did my first casual run.
@@jasonreed7522 then there is speedrunning the old Pokemon games...
One thing that Trackmania (2020) does that is really cool is having seasonal campaigns. Every 3 month long season they release 25 new tracks divided into 5 difficulty levels. Each track has times set for bronze silver and gold medals as well as a "hidden" author time (can be shown with plugins). This is great in that it encourages players to push for better and better times, aka speedrunning, but it also keeps things fresh for the more casual audience who by making sure there is a regular influx of new tracks.
As much as it could be argued that it isn't due to needing Livesplit for the timer, I would say Sonic Adventure DX is an amazing speedrun-friendly game honestly. You got a great casual experience alongside some of the most insane skips for the stories. On top of that, unlike in sa2b, you choose which gameplay style you would want to try and perfect. Like fishing? Speedrun Big and learn how insanely precise your jumps can be optimized to get Froggy back. Like Amy's hammer? Speedrun Amy and learn that walls are merely an illusion of the mind and that Hammer Jump is the answer to every obstacle aside from sad Final Egg doors. Like missiles? Speedrun Gamma and learn that Gamma's hover is honestly the second most broken thing in the game due to walls being mere suggestions as you go through Hot Shelter wayyyy earlier than intended. Like flying? Break the game with Tails as you just soar through the air and walls without a care in the world until learning how to clip through walls in stages like Ice Cap to quickly get to the end! The reason I think it's an amazing speedrun game is that there's something for everyone honestly and the acting is just corny enough to keep me laughing regardless of how many times I play through it. It's just an overall really fun game to grind through, and I would suggest it to anyone wanting to get into speedrunning.
Nah, it's trash. Classic Sonic are better at Speedruning
I've been a Celeste speedrunner for about a year and a half at this point, and even if I don't play the game as much as I used to, I still see it as a great speed game for anyone. I've met so many people and made so many friends through the community and I'm barely in the top 1k runners! I can't think of a more welcoming community for any game, much less speedrunning. If you've beaten everything the game has to offer, try applying you new skills the the first 7 levels, you'll be surprised how far they get you.
These are still dozen or so seconds of downtime between levels.
@@artman40 That's literally a good thing, I can't imagine running the whole game without any breathers whatsoever. IGT is a blessing.
I had to watch this right away cause I'm making a game that I want to be speed run friendly. It's a metroidvania so I can't use all of these tips, but this was still helpful! I recently added cutscene skipping and the tutorials are just text in the environment follow by a simple skill check. I've been very wary of too much rng and even implemented secret techniques and intentional skips.
2 additional tips: 1. Speedrun friendly is always secondary to making a great game. (People generally run games they love, not games designed to be run) This shouldn't need to be said, but its still good to remind ourselves to make the game good and the rest will follow. (Mario 64 still gets constant runs despite being very clearly not speedrun friendly) 2. Try the pikmin series, its technically console RTS but its made the optimization focus of speedrunning a natural extension of the games core loop. (Gather the parts before time runs out) Its also very forgiving of experimentation including letting you restart the day and end the current day early.
@@jasonreed7522 Thank you! None of my playtesters are speedrunners and I've only kinda speedran super metroid and hollow knight in the past, so don't think I'll get too caught up in it. I think I'm more at risk of chasing theory content lol Interesting! I wouldn't have considered Pikmin for this, but you're right! I played a fair bit of 1 and 3 but didn't beat either of them (maybe I'll go back to 3 soon). Side note: I actually started developing a game inspired by Pikmin and 3D Mario, but put it on hold because it's too big to be a side-project to my metroidvania, Blooming Darkness.
Recently, I've been playing a roguelike called Revita that has a whole lot of speedrun-friendly features, which works out great for a game that's pretty much designed to be played lots of times. The screen transitions between each room, the door opening animations, and the boss intro cutscenes can be fast forwarded, or in some cases skipped altogether, with a quick tap of the space bar, taking you right into the action. The final boss has a bit of monologue the first time you fight them (also skippable), but after a few encounters they just decide to shut up and let you fight them right as you walk through the gate. The game even has an achievement that you can unlock by beating a run in under 20 minutes, and it even rewards you with a unique item to find in your future runs! The developers clearly put a lot of thought into making their game play as smoothly as possible.
Was literally considering this question all this week, how convenient
Love the topic!
great video +video idea. something, anything about fighting games
It's interesting the different things that can be done to make games speedrunable. And in the case of skipable cutscenes, it looks like some things improve the game's feel as a whole, which is very handy.
One of my main goals with my indie game was to make it speedrunner friendly! The speedruns are actually really fun now! So it's a mix of platforming and turn based combat. Of course, turn based combat can really struggle with speedrunning a lot of the times especially with grinding. So I added in a cheatcode where if you type in "speedrun" it completely negates the need for grinding. How it does this, is that it removes EXP and replaces it with a system where if the enemy you kill is a higher level than you it just sets your level to theirs! (Excluding bosses where you can only gain 1 level, but that only ever comes into play like once in the speedrun and I don't feel like getting into the reasons here) It makes it to where pathing to find enemies who are stronger than you as fast as possible is optimal, but also introduces a risk/reward system where fighting enemies way above your level could be a huge payoff or a huge time loss if you die (or even if they're just super tanky and it takes longer to kill them than it would have if you would've fought a couple other enemies). Also, no cutscene is skippable, but all dialogue is. This creates a small "minigame" during cutscenes that's just a mash as fast as possible to skip this cutscene instead of just holding a button to skip it, which I think is fun. (It also negates the possibility of accidentally skipping the whole thing as the worst you can do is skip one textbox) Anyway, if anyone feels like checking it out it's called Jeebo & Jerbo vs. Life and it's on Steam! (Also it just came out with a big UI overhaul so if you for some reason watch the speedruns on my channel, the battle menu looks like 200x better now lol)
Might I suggest putting the titles of the games being shown in a lower corner of the video? I know you put them in the description, but I don't know which one is which (I could look em up, but I'm lazy) Anyway, great video!
I think levelhead has some axing speedrun mechanics for a level creator. The trophys are great and a speedrun mode that ignores checkpoints is great, as well as the tower trails daily in which you are encouraged to speedrun for a day against everyone else for the best time in 5 levels. Although personally I'm not a massive fan of speedrunning myself, I did play a lot of levelhead because the tools are there for speedrunning. It's a fairly unknown game but I highly recommend it for fans of Mario maker, because since i got it I've never touched mario maker due to the speedrunning elements. It's also great to watch people speedrun your levels and then trying to beat them. Finally, the campaign eases you into this by encouraging it in the dev built levels so you get a fell for it during the game
Both Crypt of the Necrodancer and COTD: Cadence of Hyrule are amazing for speedrunning. The first one is naturally great for it with the added features of timers and fast restarts, while the latter adds developer intended skips for every first dungeon floor and shortcuts in the overworld. Additionally, Cadence of Hyrule pretty much becomes a different, much challenging game if you speedrun it since you will skip pretty much every upgrade and will have to face the endgame with very basic equipment in the same way Breath of the Wild speedrunners end up challenging Ganon with whatever they can find in Hyrule Castle, although the beauty of that game is that it is designed to be beat with only the dagger and the starting defense ability.
Global leaderboards are one of the best ways to discourage normal players, since they will always see the most absurd times and scores. Battlefield (at least the last one I played) made multiple leaderboards segmented by location and things that could be tracked (weapon type, accuracy, headshots, K/D, etc). With that you could compare your scores with people on your local state or country. This could be a good trick to avoid showing only the very best scores and helping keep new players motivated. Having some type of algorithm to split the leaderbords between new players, seasoned and speedruners/pros could also be an interesting solution. Something similar to Ranks in MOBA games. The key is allowing the player to compare his time/score with others at similar levels.
The big thing for me that I would love is accessibility in replaying a section to get better. I'll use the spyro games as an example as you have all the gems you need to collect but in order to test a route with collecting them all in one go requires a new save file and to get to said level. I know there are games that help eliminate this but not enough. Katana Zero great and very speedrun friendly game
a hat in time has a 'speedrunner mode' that will autoskip cutscenes including the yarn pickup animation, which normaly cant be skipped.
Glad this is out here for those who need it. I'm not a fan of speedrunning at so , but hey! I still learned a thing or two
Really interesting, I never thought too hard about that before actually
My personal favorite and actually the only game I have speed run or trackmania. The whole game is you against your old time. Yeah it has author times and leaderboards, but in reality you are your biggest enemy. Also a deterministic physics engine it is great to ensure that given the track is not one that requires a specific trick, you can get fairly consistent runs and the rng is basically you and being able to replicate the good conditions. Trackmania has one and basically just to beat author metals from user content requires you to learn about those more advanced techniques. The game is made in such way that you have to learn it. The only bad thing is that it doesn't have a tutorial but since it is focused on player content the community has done a fantastic job offering tutorial both in the form of videos and in game campaigns focused on specific types of racing tracks.
Super Cloudbuilt is a favorite of mine, a third person platformer with some shooter elements in which you have a jetpack that recharges while grounded and can be used for multiple jumps, boosting forward and wallrunning.
2 games I've speedran are Among Us (Kill all Dummies) and Pirate101 (Fin% (ends after the defeat Fin Dorsal quest is turned in)). For Among Us unless you download an old patch (which the rules allow for some reason) it's actually slower to do this category due to the extended time it takes for the ability to vote to happen due to the time it takes to show which specific people died. For Pirate101 (turn-based with grid-based combat) though you can skip the tutorial, mostly control what Battleboard layout you get depending on where you aggro mobs & can turn on Fast Combat (basically an always active speed-up key) in Options what you can't control are the other RNG heavy things (unit placements (a run can fail at the first Troggy fight if they're not spawned close together), enemy targeting/positioning/hp/lvl (higher lvl=more hp), crits (crits play a special animation which eats up time), attack animations (fancier=longer), etc.). I once had a really good run that failed due to bad RNG at the Fin fight, which was frustrating but comes with the territory of games like that.
Cluster truck also does this really well
I remember in Super Mario Odyssey, you could view leaderboards for the various minigames and I would always make sure I would at least have a faster time/higher score than my friends. Good stuff.
This channel is criminally underated!
Celeste and MK Wii are some of my personal favorites and its what got me into speedrunning as a whole! Honorable mention to refunct for being a great short and easy place to start
I think another aspect of making a game speedrun friendly is something the psychonauts devs touched on in one of their videos (I forget if it was during their let's play of psychonauts 1 that they did during the hype train for psychonauts 2, or one of the videos where they chatted while watching a speedrunner, but regardless: when bugs were reported, they would sometimes leave them in, depending on criteria such as whether they were likely to come up in normal gameplay (which usually would need to be fixed), and if it was something that speedrunners would have fun playing with (which would often not be fixed, as long as it wasn't likely to affect someone playing the game normally).
I feel like small, incremental targets are highly effective for getting into speedruns. You'll never watch a world record run and think 'I can do that', but you can slowly progress step by step until the foundation is there and all of the toughest mechanics are small window dressing. Neon White's friend leaderboard did a great job for me to push and motivate me to get better time, more than the global leaderboard ever could. I can also speak highly from experience on built-in speedrun accessibility. LiveSplit isn't difficult to use, but it's a little cumbersome (not dissimilar to a start up or reset screen that takes a little too long), so I really appreciate when these elements are baked into the game itself. At the end of 2016 I got into a game called Furi which was a lot of fun but had its own speedrun mode, complete with built-in leaderboard and stage by stage time splits. Seeing that tangible progress in real time was highly rewarding and drove me to keep playing, until I became a world record holder within a year (and actually played it at SGDQ a couple years later!), which never would have happened without that accessibility.
Dustforce 👌 i'm glad you showed a clip of it
All I can think of watching this is how Axiom Verge gives you a speed run mode after you finish the game once. It just adds a timer and removes all the cutscenes, but it sounds pretty useful. Specifically, I wish that was a setting you could mix in with harder modes that only unlock after finishing the game, because my reaction to a reward for completion is to instantly try it out, and then…it’s just the same game but harder, and I realize I’ll have to come back in a year or so.
One example of a skippable tutorial I've always liked is what Pokemon Sword and Shield does. In most Pokemon games, early on, there'll be some kind of (usually unskippable) catching tutorial. However, in SwSh, you start the game with a few Pokeballs on hand that the game never explicitly tells you about, and you're given free access to areas containing wild Pokemon before the game teaches you how to catch them. If you catch something, then when you come to the point where you'd play the catching tutorial, Leon (the NPC that teaches you) will remark that you've already caught something and that he clearly doesn't need to teach you how to, and skip the tutorial. Running into that on my first playthrough was really cool.
A point you didn't bring up but that might be important anyway is speed parity between different versions - making sure every port or localization of a game gives all players a fair shot at gunning for a top time.
The only game that I was so devoted to to try and get top billing on the leaderboards was Hydro Thunder Hurricane on the 360. I played that game religiously, knew all of the tracks inside and out, and eventually managed to break the top 10 speeds in the world on all of them. Felt good, but that was also well over a decade ago or more.
I think my favorite game series to ever watch people speedrun is the OG Ratchet and Clank trilogy, in particular Going Commando and especially Up Your Arsenal. The NG+ categories in particular are absolutely brutal when it comes to the skill curve required to truly compete, but the movement tech in those games is some of the flashiest and most stylish you'll see in any game. If y'all have watched speedruns in these games, you can't tell me it isn't incredibly satisfying watching someone do miniturret proxies, neutral lag jumps and whip jumps for half an hour as they blaze through a level in mind-bending ways.
A “speedrun friendly” game that comes to mind would be Bennet Foddy’s Getting Over It
One way you can have randomness in the game without hurting the speedrun is to have normally random elements be consistent in a special speedrun mode, or if the game can more subtly detect you’re trying to speedrun. Mario Kart 8 generally has normally randomly-placed objects like the cars in Toad’s Turnpike or the ramps in Excitebike Arena always start in the same place if you’re doing a Time Trial, and Shovel Knight has its SMB3-style enemy ambushes/map bosses go to the same spots every time if you’re on speedrunning pace when they spawn.
Masterpiece content, new sub
It helps a lot if the game is, well you know, fun. Pretty much any popular speedrun game is a masterclass one way or another. Even if you are a casual who has no interest in the art of speedrunning, pick up any popular speed game and you will probably have a great time.
I'm late but two more things about RNG that we can learn from Slay The Spire is to have an option to use less RNG and to make seeds available - When you start a game you get a random bonus (which in turn often has random effects, like pick 2 cards in your starting deck and replace them with random cards etc), but if you died before reaching the first boss then you instead get to pick between two set bonuses that are less RNG reliant, and one of those options is the preferred for speedrunners, so even though the normal gameplay involves a lot of RNG at the start of the run, speedrunners can make sure that they get a more consistent start every time. And having seeds visible and then able to be entered when you start a run kinda speaks for itself 😅 It allows you to practice the same map/enemy/loot configuration over and over, and if someone gets a good time just because they got lucky with the level generation, you can try to beat them with the exact same setup - which is a pretty big deal in the Minecraft speedrunning scene, right?
Sequence breaks are another thing that can add to speedrunning. Often they aren’t intentional by devs, but sometimes you get stuff like Metroid Dread that has several intentional sequence breaks that makes speedrunning more interesting and their presence can let less skilled players feel some unique sense of accomplishment by doing a sequence break (for me it was specifically that one lava room in Dread where you have to wall jump and slide jump through small, normally morph-ball needed paths over a pool of lava)
Splatoon campaigns have always been really nice to see speedrunners attempt! Every Splatoon game has a built in timer timer for each stage, and the separate stages allow for both single stage speedruns and Speedruns of all the stages! It's really neat, and I've always considered getting into the Speedruns for Splatoon!
I believe I heard that Ittle Dew was designed partially with speedrunning in mind. There I feel much of the challenge lies in pathing. There are so many choices for what rooms to do in what order, and a few paths you can only take if you're good enough. So after completing the game, possibly a few times with different weapon combinations, you have the puzzle of figuring out which paths are actually fast. Or you look up the world record run on youtube and skip all of that.
Wait, where’s the UNSIGHTED mention? I spent the whole video looking for it. It’s an excellent game that is not only speedrunner friendly but also has the speedrunning aspect greatly intertwined with the story in ways it’s best not for me to spoil (but don’t worry, it early game) You should definitely take a look! From the bosses, the part skipping, leaderboards, built-in gameplay timer to ease players into the concept, and the WHOLE MAP DESIGN. It’s incredible.