(this is incomplete and can be updated later) v1 (Jan. 14, 2019): Introduction and katyj98’s Speed Challenge
Introduction
BFDIA is the second season of the American animated web series Battle For Dream Island. BFDIA stands for Battle For Dream Island Again, named after its continuation of the first season. The fifth episode of Season 2 was conceptualized with a much longer plot than usual, leading it to be sectioned into parts, turning it into an epic spanning most of 2013. BFDIA 5a was uploaded on January 2nd, 2013. At the end of the episode, some characters were consumed by Evil Leafy. At the end of the month on January 31st, it was announced that 5b would be a interactive game, as opposed to a video episode.
BFDIA 5b was released on February 11th, 2013, with 33 levels in its initial release. The game is an action and puzzle platformer, continuing the plot of the previous episode, with Book waking up shrunken down in Evil Leafy and setting out to find her friends and escape. The game has one collectible, a Win Token in every level, usually hidden in an area hard to reach safely.
Fans excitedly played the game, as it was a continuation of the plot and the first time part of the series was an interactive game. However, the game got a reputation among its players pretty quickly. The puzzles were hard to figure out, some of the platforming was difficult, and many levels had Win Tokens players couldn’t touch or find. A large percent of the players did not complete all the levels, with even more unable to collect every Win Token. While it was a fun game and was the only way to play as some fan-favorite characters, one thing was clear: this game was hard.
katyj98’s Speed Challenge - 2013
No one speedrunned the game at first. Many players couldn’t beat every level, much less quickly complete them. However, there is one part of the game’s early history that’s important to note when considering the history of the game’s speedrunning.
katyj98 is a YouTuber from Singapore that was prominent in the object show community at the time due to his BFDI Trivia series. He had the knowledge and skill to beat all 52 levels released so far. (Note that while more levels are planned to be made, no new levels have been updated into the game ever since Level 51 and 52 were added on February 25th, 2013.) Kat created the Speed Challenge, with a goal of beating all 52 levels in 1 hour. He streamed his gameplay on June 2nd, 2013 via Google+ Hangouts, saying he wanted to beat his record.
However, he also tried to collect every Win Token he could, and die as less as possible. After all, Win Tokens collected, time payed, and number of deaths are the three statistic shown on the level select screen. So, he set out with the goal of finishing with those statistics as good as possible. He used a formula to calculate a score, “(200 - Time taken in minutes) ÷ Unnecessary deaths x Number of Win Tokens you get.” So since he was playing to maximize his score and only collecting some of the Win Tokens (as opposed to all or none), the challenge didn’t quite align with what are the speedrunning rulesets today. However, it is still an early case of playing the game with the intent of speed, and the video of it is in fact the only time a playthrough of the whole game was done in a single video/seating before 2018.
He told his viewers to see if they could beat his score while waiting for the next episode. At the end of his run, the final in-game time was 1:17:48.9. He didn’t reach his goal of 1 hour, but the run was still good at the time, and the video was met with good reception. As Bacon-lover101 commented, “Wow, you are a pro at the game. #VideoGameSpeedPros”. And after that, no one speedrunned the game for a few years.
yo, just to say you should update the history now with your livestream and cary's run thing. lmk so I delete this after
Yeah later I could write Dunkel Blau's TAS in 2016, the start of the speedrun.com page in 2017, and what I have done. I will come back to this and update it when i feel like it, it could be not done any time soon.
Sorry. Maybe one day I'll come back to it.
