I haven’t done a run yet but I’ve been experimenting and I think the any% strat could become getting all the tools and upgrades and then clipping into the entrance of world 4. It’s possible to make it into each door without clearing the earlier world but you have to clip out of the lobby and then maneuver around the other doors to the door you are going to. What do you think?
So I did some testing and I found out that if you do anything in another world if you haven’t completed the last one (excluding getting new tools) the game will crash meaning that the start won’t work
But if someone finds out a way to do the strat without the game crashing let me know
After even more testing I found out that you can pick up project parts but not upgrades
Even more testing and I found out that you can get upgrades if you get all upgrades in earlier worlds
A little shortcut I found a few weeks ago in world 3-1 is that right before Candace there are fences. You can clip through the 3rd closest fence to Candace on the bottom row of fences by running diagonally at it until you just go through. I have no idea how this works, there seems to be no stopping of the character or glitching of the camera and you can clip through any part of the fence so this is either an extremely weird glitch or the extremely small chance that this is a weird easter egg but that is probably not the case. I haven't tried that on any other fences in the game so there may be some other places you can do that. And the one I found will save about 1 second or more on skipping the 3-1 Candace.