Last month, our psychedelic, 2D precision platformer dropped for the Nintendo Switch and all across stores on the PC. We’ve been getting tremendous feedback from the community, especially for the art and music, but this story isn’t about that stuff. This story is about competition, precision, and optimization. 

Speedrunning has come to Spinch. Now, this isn’t exactly a surprise. The game was designed with speedrunning in mind, and even had speedrunning features implemented. Even so, we immediately got feedback from streamers, speedrunners and fans of the genre on what they want to see from a speedrunning title and what speedrunning features are most important to them. Here’s a quick rundown of some features that Spinch speedrunners have requested from our team or have praised us for including. 

A Quick Restart Button

The name of the game for speedrunning is iteration. You need to be able to quickly and efficiently try dozens and even hundreds of runs over and over again to shave time off, which means the ability to exit out of an attempt and start over. If you’ve ever seen that “Reload from Checkpoint” button in a pause menu, it’s here for this reason. Did you mess up? Did you take damage where you didn’t mean to? Hit a wall where you didn’t mean to? Just pause and reload. Crucial to this, however, is the ability to opt out of traditional checkpoints throughout the map. For Spinch, we have big, square checkpoint blocks to hit in order to save your position so if you’re bad at the game (like me) you don’t have to redo half the map. Speedrunners specifically dodge these blocks so when they reload from a checkpoint, they pop back to the start of the level. 

In-Game Time Tracker

If you want to speedrun, you’ll need a timer. Most games, especially popular games, get run with addons that track this for players, but baking the timer directly into the game itself has a number of different advantages. For one, it lowers the barrier to entry to speedrunning for any individual player. When someone starts shaving seconds off their best runs, seeing the new best time indicator pop up, that’s a gateway for players to get into speedrunning in the first place. Just like time trials in Mario Kart laid the groundwork for many speedrunners twenty years ago, an in game time tracker can do it today. It’s important for a time tracker, like Spinch’s, to include not just minutes and seconds, but also milliseconds. With that players can really drill down to frame by frame victories. For popular speedrunning levels like 2-4 and 1-1 on Spinch, many slots on the leaderboards are separated by milliseconds. 

Achievements for Deathless/Hitless

Even though it’s in the name, speed isn’t always the priority for a speedrun. Hitless/Deathless runs are just as common for players looking to flex their precision platforming prowess as super tight Any% runners. Having achievements in the game tracking hits and deaths for players allows them to use the achievements themselves as indicators for completing the speedruns. It also creates useful triggers that players can use to track these sorts of speedruns when they do elect to use addon assistance. Most importantly, though, it rewards players for striving for more than just time in their mastery of the game. Getting a great time is one thing, but getting a great time while avoiding damage and dying is another. 

Leaderboards

This feature seemed like a bit of a wishlist item at the time, but would eventually become a crucial piece of Spinch’s appeal. For many players, just getting through the game is enough of an achievement. Unlocking the puzzle, nailing the jumps, being patient and decisive. I’ve watched Twitch streams since launch where folks defeated that final boss and it’s a magical moment for them every time. But for the players post-launch, competing in our discord for best times by grinding the same maps over and over? Those players want leaderboards. It’s an instantaneous, simple way to broadcast for themselves and their competitors the progress they’re making to the world. In fact, watching the speedrunners in our community talk about one another’s runs on the leaderboard has driven a ton of traffic to the Akupara Games Discord, which is more or less the central hub for Spinch speedrunning content. Leaderboards take the function of some of the ancillary speedrunning websites and bring that to the game natively, a perfect feature to attract speedrunning players to your title. 

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If you’re thinking about implementing features for speedrunners in your next game, don’t hesitate to reach out! You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Discord! We’d love to put you in touch with some of the best Spinch speedrunners out there!