This game rules and I can't believe it only has one run, <40 reviews on steam, and not 100% positive at that. Rising Dusk, here's some attention you deserve

For starters, here's a rough run-through of Tanuki Town that saves at least 30s The secret double jump works wonders here; you can use it for the kappa if you so wish, on the drop-down 1 block with a precise jump, and in this case on the 12 box. I highly recommend only holding D/right as you're coming down grazing the side of the roof or you'll have one less box. You can always retrace your steps if the box falls off The last coin in the way is not so big a deal since you can bump into the nearby tanuki if you grab it. On a few attempts I skipped the recoil animation off the right one on the roof, I guess by moving left the second I bumped into him. neat!

other minutiae -- "restarting from last checkpoint" after the first checkpoint in the Mine level will spawn the lantern friend further in; the more offscreen you are when you trigger it the better

• for the kappa that pushes the rock, you want to get between him and said rock and walk into him 1 or 3 times, before he starts moving it. That way he will be further along in his push distance so our lantern friend won't stop and wait for kappa to katch up twice, just once. You can do the checkpoint trick again at the end of the rock segment too

-- Daitengu is real tricky but the second half is more manageable if you restart at the checkpoint

• Some Things to Note: you can double jump on the shove dudes!
• try not to get 5 coins!
• for the mudmen, jumping on the left side of its sludge when it sinks into the ground usually won't trip you up like the right side almost always does (video got lucky). More often than not you should wait in the middle of the second one before jumping
• (for practice) making it to the checkpoint pre-explosive punch guys and restarting without having previously restarted/died in the level will stick you to the floor for a beat, which helps to gather your bearings since it's such a small platform

-- you can just stand here for the last boss skeleton

• other than some double jumps in places, not much else I can think of at 1:37 AM

I was real let down when using a big coin for the mine level and ringing the bell didn't work ,'/ There are some other cool moves throughout the game, like jumping over the first undead vikings in their level and disabling the auto-scroller like it's Yoshi's Island, but that's a non-any% matter. If it's possible to do so in the mines & last boss then I haven't found it

Just finished reading this and wanting to say thanks for your research in this game. Some of the tech you are describing I found out after the initial run but never got around to doing another run and it has been a while. The Tanuki Town route to get through in that manner is solid and much better then what I was doing when trying to find a way to get through quicker. I also agree with you that this game is great and it has been fun the times it has been played. Once I get back to this game at some point, I am going to mess around with some more stuff and expand on the information that you have provided. Once again, I appreciate this very much and let's see what else we can potentially find in the future.

well.... this cycle is almost reachable but unless without one more adjustment somewhere, like a way to fall through the pear real quick, I think this is as close as it gets for now

it takes approx. 20s to get a Big coin from the store after Warashi so that's no good

but! For Doro & Tanuki Town you can "exit level" the moment you jump on the club goblin guys' foot and it will still count & trigger the paths opening~ so there's a good 7s per foot. sadly you can't collect a boss bone and exit out

The One Cycle on that level would be great as that was as close as I could get as well like in your video while testing. Nice find on being able to skip the End Level sequence for the Secret Exits as well.

here's just about the dumbest-looking way to skip half of a level that there can be:

I cannot explain why this is, but for some reason you can gain infinite height just by jumping a bunch with a box on your head. landing on those clouds allows the box to meet up with you so this is very consistent to do, and saves a good 15s. but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought this would be the way to skip this level

Nice to see a good place for that tech that was useful so great find. Congrats again on your run, it was very solid.

I was happy to see the cool stuff you discovered when I started to run this game, so thank you chump_change!

I thought I should mention some stuff I found as well, most of which I applied in my 19:15 run I just submitted!

Big things:

• Kappa Bashi Forest to unlock Tanuki Town instead of doing Doro Doro Field twice saves ~20s
• Chochin Cave East auto-scroller is ~10s faster than West, and Volcano is about the same time as Onsen.
• Getting a lantern to run through the Cave is faster still! (~30s including time taken to farm coins/buy lantern) And you don't have to bear the drudgery of an auto-scroller :P You can farm the coins pretty efficiently in Doro Doro Field. Imagining a route for the No Secret Exits category helped me come up with this.

Small things:

• At the end of Tanuki Town, can push the block off the button from the far side if you push on the top right corner.
• After the first nose hit on the oni at the top of Sukui Falls, you can intercept the Kappa on the right, which keeps the block in a better position to jump off.
• In Kubinashi Station after each stage of the fight you are blocked from going to the next screen for a while, but if you go off-screen by falling down fast enough you can skip this. Only useful at the end so you can get the remains faster. (I didn't manage this in the run)

Weird warp glitch with probably no use (around 55s into video):

You pushed that stone so well that you found a hidden time machine to take you back to that room. That is wild to say the least and thanks for sharing that.

nice run & route! I've been playing around the last few days looking for more ideas that could fit in and I have a few that happen to stick to the old route minus the forest. I haven't timed any of them, but going with 2 & 3 save you from the wiggly road on the overworld

you can get through Tanuki Town with just 3 coins, one tighter than it looks jump onto the 1 block thing, and one quick double jump up into the 2 box which is also tight and can take a while but once you get the hang of it etc. you can also get one of those jumps from the jar onto the 1 block thing and skip the rooftops but it is not advisable. I tried for a good 7 minutes to record it and got nowhere, even with a setup of walking off the balcony onto the jar and jumping (you land on the very last pixel or two of said jar), even with mashing spacebar ahead of time

after getting 2 more free coins on the intro level & up to 10 or so on the second level, with the coin farming you could spare another few seconds to get a Big coin. use that big boy early on the Onsen level (while waiting around) to be able to go through the 4 block faster than waiting for the pear & you can make the geyser cycle at the end, provided you wiggle around a bit in that one gap well enough.

West Cave done before the bass drops

• has the micro-optimization of holding right after using the menu
• less scary jumps than East
• can beat without breaking stride (Hard)

• the very end requires either a jump on a cloud or on the cliff lip :s

• for the last screen, if you hold right as the coin up there on the HUD flattens out you can zing straight to the end without much maneuvering. you can restart checkpoint on this screen too to practice !

https://gfycat.com/esteemedgrandiosegerenuk as for the Giri box, I found I may have made it seem like you need to hyper spam jump (I used my right index on spacebar) but after trying it a lot it can be done with casual mashing on a controller (with a bit more speed after the clouds). you want to hang right to hit both 3 blocks & continue right through a cloud, otherwise you'll most likely lose your box on a number block if you try those. however if your box is bumped from your jump you'll need to think quick!! my computer chugs a bit on this stage too

https://gfycat.com/kindlyhairygoshawk dumb slide that makes the 12 box jump easier but getting this angle is not

if that weird warp is anything like another game I ran, La-Mulana 2, it looks like it might send you to the 0, 0 coordinate on the map, though if that were the case it wouldn't be in a different screen. I guess it's a level-with-doors only thing (for now[?])

That is an elegant Tanuki Town! I facepalmed from how obvious it seems in retrospect. The jump from the rice barrel (jar) is pretty insane, yeah. Any tips on breaking the 2 box? I only rarely manage it.

You can get over the kappa quickly and easily by jumping into him twice (which moves him backwards) followed by doing a neutral wall jump. Saves a bit of time over backtracking for the coin, plus you don't have to worry about getting rid of that extra coin. Regarding the 12 box: Riding it completely on the corner is a bit too much for me, but I have found that you can similarly push it fairly hard while jumping into it so it doesn't require setup.

I realised Cloudjumping is surprisingly easy. I can even do multiple in a row like in the video fairly consistently. So even if you collect a coin or two, it is not a big problem.

After introducing the lantern, I did wonder which cave approach would be faster. I simply kept going east because with the autoscroller it used to be faster. With the new Onsen cycle I'm sure west is faster! (even with the on-average 2.2s that it takes to farm money for the coin)

Thanks for the insight on Giri box; I will try it some more.

for the 2 box you want to jump the second time very quickly after the first as the box is still rising in the air; I think it considers you're jumping off the lip of the roof in that moment. I didn't have a good 12 box plan like that but I did know about the kappa, just more often than not I blow it. and for the jar jump it's not on the instant you land on the jar but an instant after that for the sweet spot~

it might be superstition but jumping off the ends of the red bridges is less distance traveled I imagine. and I realized that you won't stand around the start of levels if you hold a direction after the screen looney tunes shrinks into black & level starts loading, rather than right after pressing the button.

I realized that you won't stand around the start of levels if you hold a direction after the screen looney tunes shrinks into black & level starts loading, rather than right after pressing the button.

Yes, I find it quite annoying how you have to wait before you can start holding right ^^'

I think you might be right about the bridges; it is certainly true that walking up them is slower. Though my superstition says you can get a little speed boost if you fall and land on corners/slopes like the ends of the bridges, but I'm not sure if jumping can allow you to carry that speed longer or not.

As for the kappa, I know you mentioned it being possible in your first post but I wanted to share how I do it since I have quite good success with it. It is important to have good horizontal speed and not hit the box when you knock into the kappa, and for the jump off the block, don't hold any directional buttons until after the jump. (Plus if you fail once it doesn't lose time yet compared to getting 3 coins)

I found 2 more cool things ^^

It's a bit silly, but you can jump off a coin to reach the 12 box. I let the tanuki take a 2nd coin so that he pushes the dropped coin to the correct position. Whether you pick up the coin you jump off is a bit inconsistent, so I make sure to jump on the right side of the tanuki's head. This ensures you get the coin from the tanuki and you want at least 1 coin going into the next section so you can break the 2 box.

Using the inf. box jump you can push the water up to the foot instead of waiting for it to come down

oh man those are so clever. I don't know if I wrote it down anywhere but the box trick only seems to work with #4 boxes and under for some reason, which sucks for Daitengu. if you could get one on your head in Doro somehow then that would save some time.... it would hurt though