CW: jumpscare, the skeleton, very spooky
actual CW: mild flashing, cartoon gore, profanity
Bone.exe is a parody game, both making fun of and paying homage to a lot of the creepypasta that was popular online at the time. You play as Jumpscare the Skeleton and must defeat a variety of reimagined creepypasta characters. This run tackles both the main game, as well as the additional secret bosses you can find - two by entering secret areas and one at the end unlocked by collecting all 24 notes scattered throughout the game.
Game objectives
- fastest completion while fighting all bosses
Tech/Mechanics
The game is a fairly simple run and gun, the movement speed is static and there's no acceleration, you can jump higher by holding the button down longer and you can shoot forward. The one slightly unique mechanic is that you can aim your gun slightly up by pressing the up arrow, allowing you to angle shots, this leads to two small bits of tech:
Faster Bullets
Due to the power of Math, angling a shot very slightly upwards will make it essentially travel along the same line as a regular shot, but with a lot more speed. This isn't terribly helpful as bullets despawn when off-screen, but it occasionally helps set up a kill on an enemy that's in an annoying spot.
Shooting Downwards
If an upwards angled shot is performed on the same frame as a turnaround, the shot will fly at a downwards angle. This helps keep DPS up during bossfights where jumping is required to dodge certain attacks.
As an additional note, landing from a jump stops movement for 1 frame. It seems like there are ways to avoid it, but I haven't been able to figure out how it works, so I stuck to simply minimizing jumping as much as possible.
Stage by stage comments
World 1
This is where the most intense flashing happens, as there are 5 pages right next to one another, each causing the screen to go black for a handful of frames while collecting.
Immediately after the pages, I wait for 2 frames to cause the ghost above me to shoot left instead of right. Because enemy bullets travel at the same speed as me, later in the level I would need to wait for 8 frames to let it pass before I could make a jump.
The doors at the end of each level can be entered sooner than I do, but doing so causes a slow 'walk up to the centre of the door' animation, so it's faster to walk to the middle manually and only then enter.
Level 2 features the only damage boost of the run. Slimes' jump distance is determined by the distance from Jumpscare, this damage boost required me to get on the little ledge without aggroing the slime up top, only then doing a small hop to get in range, making the slime do the perfect jump to damage boost up to the note. Aggroing the slime any earlier messes up the jump trajectory and causes the hit to knock Jumpscare to the right.
The bossfights in this run mostly follow the same pattern. I can shoot my gun once every 16 frames, so the main way to optimize is to shoot as soon as possible after gaining control and then make sure to land every shot. Some bosses, like Leenkh, will have an invulnerable phase or attack, in those cases I get closer to minimize bullet travel time before the invulnerability applies in order to maximize damage, and then hit the boss again as soon as it's vulnerable. The same applies to the final hit of a fight.
World 2
The long tunnel going left is actually one of the hardest points to optimize, which isn't saying much given the simplicity of the game but still. I manipulate my shots in a very particular way to start damaging the red bug enemy as soon as possible, so that the bullets that come out on its death will hit the ground before I walk into them. The second red bug is then not a problem, as I can just jump through the middle opening in the bullets without stopping.
The Full-Time Masochist bossfight is the first instance of downwards shooting being used to save time.
World 3
The platforming levels themselves aren't too interesting, but the boss is the only one whose pattern didn't allow me to achieve max DPS, I had to delay the downwards shots after dodging his charges to make sure they connect.
World 4
This world is just a formality. The statues in the second room show the code needed for the door.
Sunik.txt's shield attack ends by them throwing the shield at Jumpscare. I made sure to stand directly under the boss so that the shield would uncover the boss' head as soon as possible.
The final door after SkeleSatan is entered "unoptimally" since that is the last input.
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Accepting as a full completion branch (it also has the best ending).
despoa: Processing...