I'm writing up the route from scratch in order to attempt a new speedrun.

I'd like to point out a few time savers that I found that aren't used in the current speedruns listed (by Iyerbeth and me).

I'm on version 1.2.1.

In the elevator room, save/restart when the lever close-up starts closing saves 1.0 second.

In the elevator room, save/restart right after clicking on the spear saves 1.5 seconds.

In the elevator room in the spider web, save/restart right after clicking on the first stick saves 3.5 seconds.

In the elevator room after climbing up, save/restart when Tsioque picks up the sticks (when she reaches for the 2nd one), saves 1.0 second.

An optimal wall sneaking game would save about 25 seconds.

The stairs running mini-game can be faster by 50.3 seconds by failing three times on purpose and then clicking "skip".

At the stairs guard, after dropping the chandelier on him, save/restart when he chases after Tsioque and the coins left your inventory but before the mini-game fades in. This skips the stairs minigame and therefore obsoletes the above timesaver. The skip saves ~1 minute 40 seconds compared to doing the mini-game the normal way without failing on version 1.2.1.

I confirmed both these tricks work on version 1.1.3, before the mini-game was changed ( https://tcrf.net/Tsioque#Revisional_Differences ).

There might be more. I still have half the game left to look at.

Damn... Because the minigame can now be skipped, that means older versions are viable again.

There are things like double-clicking on the fridge to warp to it that won't work on the latest version.

I will take some time looking into differences and bug fixes. I will be sure to add findings to the tcrf page as I go along.

I have all versions except 1.1.4 and possibly others that I haven't seen gone live. As I said in the other forum topic, it might be possible to write a patch program so anyone can run any version. Luckily this game can be run separate from Steam.

Looking at the source code in "TsioqueSteam.swf" revealed that the "fabric cutting" minigame becomes skippable if you fail it 3 times where you have to spend at least 1.5 seconds each time. Something you might want to do if you can't be bothered completing it in less than 5 seconds.

I can now safely say version 1.2.0 and 1.2.1 are the best choice. Reasons:

• 1.1.2 changed most quit/restarts in the speedrunner's favor so anything before that is automatically bad.
• The timing for skipping the tower minigame (quitting when the guard chases you) is slightly better on version 1.2.0 making that version the best choice. No important change between 1.2.0 and 1.2.1.

Version 1.1.3 changed some animations. Worth noting is the ever so slightly longer animation when the guard reacts to Tsioque dropping the medallion a 2nd time ( https://tcrf.net/Tsioque#Guard.27s_Second_Reaction ) , but I don't think it is so much longer as to nullify the "better timing" advantage in 1.2.0 mentioned above.

Hi Mugg, it's so awesome to see you!! Sorry it took me a few days to reply, work has been a bit nuts but it's so great to hear your thoughts on all this. I'd done a bunch of timings myself and had a couple of the ones you'd found in the elevator room. I also had been trying to work on the wall section, I think there's a few elements to that. I think the optimal route is to consistently take two steps, and a third if you see the bird guard coming up from the bottom, their line of sight seems bad compared to the others. You want to get to the running jump though so that you're stop-start cycle stops there, and in limited testing so far I'm often one short so I think it's worth taking one risky move but otherwise following that plan.

I had considered the time saves from failing on purpose, but since I was the only person still running the game I decided not to because they're kinda fun but since it's the two of us at now if you're thinking we should then in the spirit of speedrunning it, I think you're probably right that we should at least be failing the stairs. I think for the sewing game, you lose up to 1.5 seconds if you get the fail timing wrong, so I'm not so sure that's worth going for vs just trying to get better at it? When I was running the game before I was using a batch script to retry the sewing section over and over, I need to remake it now I'm doing attempts again but I'd be happy to share that.

It turns out with the skip in the elevator room where you can animation skip on the spider web, it's possible to skip before getting the web and then continue the game without it, and become soft locked at the guard on the toilet.