As of now, the fastest version of the game for speedrunning is the GOG release. But why is that?

One of the most commonly used strats in runs is hitting "Restart Checkpoint" during certain levels. This helps with skipping cutscenes, animations, better spawn points, etc. On the Steam version, however, hitting Restart Checkpoint triggers a black screen that lasts about 2 seconds.

On the other hand, the GOG version skips that black screen entirely and goes straight into the loading process. This faster transition is one of the main reasons why we prefer GOG over Steam.

Here are some visual comparisons:

Restart Checkpoint on Steam (The King of Chinatown)

Restart Checkpoint on GOG (The King of Chinatown)

As you can see in the videos, the Steam player loses a bit of time right after restarting the checkpoint, while the GOG version loads much quicker.

If you have any questions, feel free to hop into our Discord server and ask! There’s also an updated autosplitter for GOG linked in the pinned messages.