I am releasing a game on Steam tomorrow, December 16th called Jetscout: Mystery of the Valunians.

The focus in making this was an enjoyable experience for any player, but as a big fan of speedruns, I think runners who like challenging 2D platformers would be interested to hear about it. As a physics-based platformer, Jetscout is crammed full of massive risk vs reward situations for speedrunning. Casual players will land on every platform which act as checkpoints, but this both takes about a second of animation and completely kills any momentum so it will be avoided as much as possible in runs. However there is limited fuel which only restores by landing on a checkpoint so you can only skip so many at a time, and a single mistake resulting in a death will set you back to your last activated checkpoint. I had a beta tester describe the game as "Super Meat Boy with a jetpack." This part is more a matter of personal preference, but Jetscout features pretty minimal RNG.

To give you the quickest look at what a run would be like without even playing the game, I recorded an Any% run myself on Hard difficulty. It took 45:46 on the in-game timer (which pauses during load screens) and just around 50minutes total. I died 20ish times. Have a look here: It's an unlisted video to hide spoilers from casual players subscribed to my channel.

In addition there are unlockable bonus missions which are brutally difficult. a 100% run would be pretty nightmarish in my mind but there are probably some up for the challenge.

As far as QoL for speedrunning in this game, standalone cutscenes are skippable, there are multiple save slots, it's very quick to restart a mission, and all menus are fully functional with a game controller on the next frame after opening, without having to wait for window animations to complete. There's a handful of dialogue bits that proved difficult to safely program a skip and still maintain game stability since several important events are also happening, but button-mashing gets you through these pretty quickly.

You can see the official trailer and more info on steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1395410/Jetscout_Mystery_of_the_Valunians/

For the speedrunning community who have given me hours of entertainment and many hours of background streams while working on Jetscout, I'd be happy to give any active runner a steam key if you pm me. Also I hope this thread doesn't come off as just an ad - I've thought about this game being a good speedrun game from very early on in development!

Thanks,

Dustin dustinaux@gmail.com

I'm a developer working on a jetpack-based 2D platformer called "Jetscout: Mystery of the Valunians." The gameplay is similar to "Lunar Lander," with the super simple controls of turn left, turn right, and jetpack thrust. Some screens and gifs if you're interested: https://okshur.com/new-game-announcement-jetscout-mystery-of-the-valunians

Although speedrunning wasn't the goal in making the game, I think it may turn out to be a fun game to run. While development is still underway, I wanted to ask for some input from the community on things I could include as far as quality of life features or things I should avoid that would make the game more enjoyable.

Here are some of my own thoughts:

I already try to have quick menus and cutscenes you can either skip or quickly button-mash through. There are also very short menu transitions, but you don't need to wait before the controls work, so you can go through menus as fast as you can hit buttons (well technically it may be one press per frame, but the framerate is uncapped). I think this is just good game design even ignoring speedrunning.

There's a little ending sequence at the end of a level but behind the scenes the game saves and records progress the instant you land on the final platform, which would allow runners to exit to the mission select screen immediately and continue to the next level then.

I'm thinking a full 100% run would take between one and two hours as a rough estimate, with only one or two minutes total spent on menus and a couple more on loading screens.

The platforming itself I think lends itself to a unique speedrun experience: A mission is made of 10-20 platforms which act as checkpoints. The casual player will likely land on every checkpoint. But landing has a tiny animation plus your velocity is set to zero, so it is a couple seconds faster for every checkpoint you skip. However, your jetpack has limited fuel that is only refilled when you land, so you'll have to route which checkpoints to land on based on your own skill level and risk vs reward appetite.

There's no velocity cap, and along with that no falling damage if you land on a platform at high speed, but there are many tight turns and other hazards, and the only way to brake is to turn yourself backwards and thrust, which takes time and fuel.

There is minimal RNG, and most missions will have none at all.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these features as well as what kind of things you either like to see so I can try to include it or stuff you hate to see in an otherwise enjoyable speedrun so I can minimize or avoid it!