Grimrock

First let me preface this with the fact that I have done two normal playthroughs (normal and hard difficulty) already in which I took my sweet time. I didn't just get the game and decide to blast through it.

According to the in-game timer (which starts at character creation screen) ending at "the end" the final time was 1:01:52.

I did it in segments. Levels 1-6 I did in single segments each, meaning if I messed up or an enemy blocked me, I restarted the level. From 7 and on I have the occasional mid-level save. Keep in mind I was doing this for a video, so I kept the segments to a minimum, obviously. Had I been doing this run without recording and saving/loading constantly I could have likely gotten it under 45 minutes, but what fun is that?

Now for the videos themselves. I've uploaded them so you guys can see them if you wish. Obviously this will be major spoiler territory, so only watch these videos if you have beaten the game!! I only open up a bare minimum of secrets and only do puzzles that are required, so if you have beaten the game, it is unlikely it will spoil anything for you.

Here is an example level (floor 5): If you are interested in seeing the full run: There is level commentary for each video.

For those just interested in a picture of the end stat screen: Speedrunning this game, while occasionally frustrating, was a lot of fun. The biggest variable is the enemy spawns. They are either random or they just choose to walk around randomly (or both), so they often get in the way and make me scrap an entire run. Sometimes they spawn perfectly and I can never replicate it, which is why I make a few mistakes in a couple floors that stay, because running into a wall for half a second costs a lot less time than a mob blocking you.



Let me know what you guys think. Especially if you think I'm a crazy person for doing a speedrun on a game within a week of release

Well done.

Congratulations on that achievement, and thanks for recording it - I like to watch speedrun vids! Will you submit it to SDA?

dastein wrote:Congratulations on that achievement, and thanks for recording it - I like to watch speedrun vids! Will you submit it to SDA?

I'm talking about it on the SDA forums. Doing a speedrun this fast is very *very* unusual, most people do a lot (sometimes months) of planning before a run, so some are obviously skeptical. But it is looking like it may get put up on the site, so we'll see.

Nice work!

Daniel.

Hey what levels did your characters reach at the end?

Since combat was avoided when at all possible, they reached level 6 by the end. Floors 3 and 7 had the most unavoidable combat.

Good stuff, more speedruns would be cool. I think the most time-consuming thing is the combat, especially early on. A speedrun with Toorum would be ideal due to his increased movement speed, but this would require a way to bypass the combat as much as possible.

Keefy wrote:Good stuff, more speedruns would be cool. I think the most time-consuming thing is the combat, especially early on. A speedrun with Toorum would be ideal due to his increased movement speed, but this would require a way to bypass the combat as much as possible.

The trouble with Toorum is every combat he ends up in is 4x the duration, if not more due to running around and dodging. While he would be useful for some things, I doubt you'd be able to do it faster. If someone was keen I reckon an Air-specced mage with invisibility might be able to shave the time down a bit.

Disasterrific wrote:

Keefy wrote:Good stuff, more speedruns would be cool. I think the most time-consuming thing is the combat, especially early on. A speedrun with Toorum would be ideal due to his increased movement speed, but this would require a way to bypass the combat as much as possible.

The trouble with Toorum is every combat he ends up in is 4x the duration, if not more due to running around and dodging. While he would be useful for some things, I doubt you'd be able to do it faster. If someone was keen I reckon an Air-specced mage with invisibility might be able to shave the time down a bit.

I thought about invisibility, but by the time I would have had enough skillpoints for it, I was on floor 9. Since it wouldn't be of use in 11-13, it would just be for floor 10 and I was able to do that floor killing only a couple flies. One was in a hall and would have been unavoidable anyway.