General Guide

Movement Options

In this guide I will list out your movement options in the game:

Before you have both the Cloning device and the Swapping upgrade and when swapping or creating clones is not possible, the fastest way of traveling is by bunny hopping. This is done by pressing the jump button as soon as you land to negate/reduce the slowdown that you get from the walking animation. You make the most distance by using longer hops instead of shorter hops, so hold down the jump button during each jump. Bunny hopping is most effective if you land on a downward slope, which will result in a big speed boost.

When both swapping and cloning is possible, the fastest way of traveling is by quickly creating a clone and then swapping to that clone. I call this movement technique 'blinking' (because it's similar to the blink ability in games like StarCraft 2 and Dishonored). Since the hitbox of the clone sprite is smaller from the top and the bottom than from the sides, this means that quickly blinking up or down is more difficult than left or right. However when blinking left or right, make sure to correct for gravity pulling the clone downwards.

Sometimes it may be benicifial to bunny hop instead of blinking if you are one hop away from a ledge. One blink is a little faster or about as fast as a bunny hop, but by bunny hopping you already have some downward momentum as you move past the ledge (as opposed to blinking, which sets your vertical speed to 0), which also accelerates over time. This means you'll fall down a bit faster.

Speedrun Settings

These are the settings that I've found to be best suited for speedrunning:

General options:
- Mouse Sensitivity: 100% - Higher sensitivity means creating clones faster but sacrifices accuracy, so use lower sensitivity (~90-95%) if you are still learning this game
- VSync: Off - Even with my crappy PC I experience no screen tearing, so it's not necessary
- Depth of Field: Off - Depth of field can slow down the game a bit and makes the character sprites blurry

Keyboard/mouse:
- Pause Menu: Q (instead of Esc) - You will be going to the pause menu a lot during the speedrun, and Q is much easier to press than Esc
- Memory Log: Left Shift (instead of F) - Mainly useful for the 100% run where you have to press E to open a Log/Message from Home and then quickly press the Memory Log button to close the message. Left Shift works best for me in this case
- Create Clone: Left Mouse Button, Swap Clone: Right Mouse Button - This is reversed from the default setting. I've found that pressing and holding LMB to create a clone and then releasing it and quickly pressing RMB to swap feels much more natural than the other way around. This is purely a personal preference, but may be worth trying out to feel the difference

Tricks, Skips and Strats

The majority of the speedrun is doing the 'intended' routes and puzzle solutions only as fast as possible. On some occasions the run requires tricks that are not 'intended', which will be listed below.

- Elevator skip: some elevators allow you to blink your way upwards instead of using the elevators themselves to go up. There are two elevator skips which are different than the rest, see below
- Waste Management elevator skip: this elevator is very long but it is skippable. The best way of skipping this elevator is by using 5 clones, which is only possible if the first clone dies from fall damage. The key to this skip is timing when to start the first blink upwards. An audio cue that I use is just as the audio message "I found the ship" starts playing. Alternatively, a video cue would be when you're a sprite's length below the first window of the elevator shaft. Also make sure to correct for the change of the camera that occurs as you enter the top part of the elevator
- Mind Science Laboratory elevator skip: this is the elevator just after the cutscene where Dennett/Chalmers swaps with the Giant Head. During that cutscene there is no slowdown when you create a clone; this slowdown returns only after the elevator comes all the way down. But you can already do the elevator skip as the elevator is still above the ground. This means that you have to blink upwards without slowdown, which can be tricky (and if you die, then you have to watch the cutscene again which wasts 90 seconds)
- Restarting the checkpoint: you can restart the checkpoint to skip the following cutscenes: Chori V terminal, Laboratory Access blockade and Sample Containment Security blockade
- Elevator animation skip: if you press an elevator button to make it go down (up) and then quickly leave the area through a door, then if you re-enter that area the elevator will have moved all the way down (up)
- The best strategy during anti-gravity sections without blinking (the 1st and 4th sections) is to make your turns as smoothly as possible, since making sharp turns will reduce your forward speed
- The best strategy during anti-gravity sections with blinking (the 2nd and 3rd sections) is to place the last clone not directly in between the second last clone and the door, but slightly at an angle to the door. This is to prevent you from accidentally swapping with the previous clone when you try to get in the door
- If there is a small gap in-between two conveyor belts, then always blink between them, since this gap will decrease your speed. Blinking will also decrease your speed, but you will move forward during the blink
- The solution to the 3rd puzzle in Xeno Research is not as intended: you can make use of a small space above the red lights where you can swap through

Name	Author
General Guide	SebDaMuffin 7 years ago
Movement Options	Immersed 10 years ago
Speedrun Settings	Immersed 10 years ago
Tricks, Skips and Strats	Immersed 10 years ago