It counts and it's fine

Hi there, welcome to HK! We all have been there and many of us ended up deciding Any% nmg in the patch 1.2.2.1 since it's the run with most number of players, but not everyone enjoys it or just find it frustrating, many others runs longer or shorter categories or even switched from patch, there's a lot of categories and that's why it's hard to help you decide one. We all can share with you our knowledge in the Discord server (up there around should be a button with the Discord label). My personal recommendation for you is to visit some runs of different categories, take a look and then maybe decide. There's not such a thing like '' run for starters'', there exists in every category certain routes more ''beginner friendly'' so don't worry if you feel like you're choosing a hard one in the end. And remember, the first thing is to have fun and enjoy speedrunning.

Some personal favourites runs if it may help:

Any% ngm in both patches[1.2.2.1 and 1.4.3.2+]

All Skills ngm (1.2.2.1) <- personally I find it very fun to start even tho there are some tricky skips

White Palace / Path of pain <- If you enjoy platforming over anything else, these cats might be cool for you

Pantheons <- If you enjoy bosses and fighting, that's your place!

I hope this helps you a bit more, but I encourage you to enter the Discord server and ask more about other cats like Glitched cats etc.

Have a nice day!

As Gusten says, the autosplitter etc doesn't work in Linux, BUT you can keep speedrunning the game (just time things manually like in other games) or consider to have Dual Boot Windows and Linux so you can have both in your computer.

I'm not a verifier, but you can see the rules of each category and what's permitted. Healthbars aren't.

I'm not sure if someone found it before, but since it's completely attached to the spider RNG I would not even try to replicate it since it's faster to kill it using the tanking method. Not always the spider it's going to walk the whole path to the end and not always you will have so much HP to try that trick, but ofc it's just an opinion based on what I saw in your clip.