Need help for first game
7 years ago
United States

Hi everyone. This is really one of my first times getting into the speedrunning community, and I wanted to try some runs myself. However, I have no games that really jump out to me that I should speedrun, so I wanted to know if you guys had any suggestions. I am looking for PC games, FYI, and the statement: "Play your favorite game" doesn't really help me. Anyways, thanks!

England

Is there a particular reason that "Play your favorite game" doesn't help?

The reason we generally suggest that is that it's very advisable for your first experience in speedrunning to be in a game you have a deep love for, as well as hopefully an intimate understanding of how the game works. It doesn't necessarily need to be your FAVOURITE, but it's very good if it's a game you've spent a lot of time on, and don't mind spending a lot more time on.

If you take speedrunning seriously, you're gonna be putting a LOT of hours into it. Hours into the same levels, really. That gets grating real fast if you don't love the game you're playing, and the process of learning is made a lot easier if you already know the game well.

So rather than just say "Play your favourite game", I'll rephrase it with certain criteria, since you yourself will know best what games you should or may want to run based on these criteria:

What games do you like to play the most? What genres of games do you generally enjoy? What games have you put the most time into? What games do you generally consider yourself an expert in? Is your game popular, with a lot of support to help you learn? (This is arguably important for your first game until you learn speedrunning methodologies, then you can look at running games that haven't been done before if you want) Do you mind if a game has a lot of randomness and luck involved, also known as RNG?

If you can come up with a shortlist of games that tick most of these boxes, then you're probably onto a winner. Asking for recommendations for first games may not be as helpful as you expect, since people are invariably just going to come in and recommend the games they themselves run, and they already enjoy those games so it doesn't really say anything about whether YOU would enjoy them. Try instead to use the above criteria, and any others you can think of that would influence your decisions, to come up with a short list of games you may consider, then check out the communities for those games and see if it's easy to get started with learning, I firmly believe that will give you a better start for speedrunning.

If you absolutely must have my personal suggestions though, per genre:

2D sidescroller: Freedom Planet/Super Meat Boy (These ones are HARD) FPS: Borderlands 2 RPG: Undertale 3D platformer: Sonic Adventure 2

Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
7 years ago

What genre(s) do you like?

United States

Thanks for the advice! I was actually looking into Undertale, so I'll try it. Also, I like RPGs and some First Person Shooters, like Fallout. I hope this helps!