So I've been watching New Pokémon Snap runs for a while and I bought the game today and was wondering how active is this community still

The highscore community is pretty active. Some of our runners do score stuff pretty regularly. The speedrun is pretty inactive though. Not that that should deter you, if you'd like to try

OK thanks I was going to start runs anyway what category would you reccomend I'm not sure Also I have a few category ideas

Any% is a good place to start, unless you'd rather run the longer category for All Pokes.

You're welcome to join our discord server and talk about category ideas as much as you'd like. We'll only add a board for it if enough people are interested in the idea though

I have 2 things to note:

Seconding the idea of coming to the discord. I know personally I love talking about the speedrun, perhaps more than actually doing runs. It's a really fun game to route and become an expert in. We'll be happy to talk shop.

Also, I'll note All Pokes is cool. Any% is a more natural starting point, but is a slow game with lots of cutscenes and the Illumina pokes are basically autoscrollers. All Pokes goes through all those same things, but the second half of the run is all boosting and no cutscenes. Percentage wise, more of what makes Pokemon Snap fun happens in the run, so I enjoy it more as a run.