- This movie was made with the
--no-gui argument
- MD5 Hash: 1f8881dbfc2d13e3f64c19169b2e2614
- This movie aims to minimize the in-game time
- You can download the game here
- Commentary in the form of Youtube subtitles is available
About this game and movie
Snailiad is a Flash metroidvania developed by Auriplane. It follows the story of Snaily Snail, who's on a quest to save his friend Moon Snail and turn him into the legendary Sun Snail.
This movie aims to get 100% completion, which involves getting every item and going to the Shrine of Iris to save Moon Snail. An extra rules is that I can't collect items in "parallel universes", which are accessible by entering one of the map's borders. This run achieves that goal roughly 6 minutes and 15 seconds faster than
the RTA WR by Dimuslv.
Timing
I decided to time this run using the in-game timer, so the final time is actually 3 minutes, 14 seconds and 380 milliseconds. I made this decision because that's how the time in RTA runs is measured, and not because I started the TAS by following the RTA route with some changes, but then realized that it would have been faster to end the run on the Moon Snail boss fight, but by the time I realized this, it was too late to make the changes, so I ended up just categorizing this as an in-game time run because, otherwise, the run category would be "All endings, 100% completion, NPU", which would look really dumb and really accentuate this blunder. If you're wondering, the in-game timer doesn't count during the first Moon Snail cutscene, and that's why it's faster when using IGT to sit through the cutscene.
Special thanks
Before continuing, I would like to thank Dimuslv for helping a ton with this TAS. They helped by making a version of the game that displayed Snaily's coordinates, they explained glitches that were very important to the run and also suggested many ideas for how to do certain rooms.
I fully believe that their contributions warrant a co-authorship.
Unique game version
This movie requires a specific version of the game that caps the framerate at 60fps. This is required due to the fact that the base game runs internally at 120fps, but when playing casually, it'll never run faster than 60fps.
Running the base game at 60fps caused some glitches to become impossible, and running it at 120fps caused desync issues, so that's why this mod is needed, it's the most accurate way of TASing this game. The mod was developed by Dimuslv, and is available on the link I provided up there on the "Movie information" section.
Glitches
- Ceiling Zips
- When Snaily's shell is in contact with a ceiling (or floor if you reverse gravity), if you jump every frame by alternating the jump buttons and move in a direction, you'll start moving rapidly in the opposite direction. By using this trick, not only can I move extremely fast, but I can also clip through walls, which allows for many routing opportunities. This trick doesn't work when your gravity's sideways, for some reason. Also, when you're performing this trick with reversed gravity, you can only clip through walls if said wall is just a single block tall, for some unknown reason.
- Blip/Blop
- If you jump while holding up and right in a top left corner, you will slightly clip upwards, not enough to actually clip through it, but just enough to move the camera upwards in the room where Gravity's located, saving a little bit of time.
- Wall Jumping
- By entering a wall while crouching and moving, you can enter the wall. You can then jump again, which saves time if you have to climb a wall quickly and don't have Gravity Snail yet. It's only used once in the run.
- Rightclipping
- By moving right while crouching with normal gravity, you'll enter the wall, which allows you to move upwards or downwards inside said wall, which gets a lot of use in the run. It is important to mention that you need to have Gravity Snail in order to perform this glitch.
- Normal Rightclipping
- This variant of Rightclipping doesn't require Gravity Snail to be performed, but it's way more precise. I only perform it once to enter the room Gravity Snail is located in.
- Border Blocks
- For almost every room in the game, the borders that you're not supposed to cross are usually blocked by blocks that instantly kill you upon contact. This can be avoided by being in hitstun when crossing these blocks, seeing as you don't get damaged and therefore you don't get instantly killed.
- Double Jumping
- This is a really weird glitch I found. Basically, if you wiggle back and forth in the air by switching opposite gravities every frame, you might be able to jump in the air. This may seem useless (and it kinda is), but it allows me to almost instantly gain a lot of momentum when I switch gravity in the air, which is useful for optimization. I believe this happens due to the fact that Snaily can jump when his velocity is 0 units per frame on the gravity's direction, so, reducing his speed by constantly changing the gravity might cause that to happen and allow me to perform a jump.
Items
I'm gonna talk about the items of this game in the order I collect them in the run (kinda).
- Heart Containers
- These items give you an extra heart of health, along with fully healing you. They kind of work like the energy tanks from Metroid.
- Helix Fragments
- These items have no functional use, aside from unlocking the secret ending if you collect all of them.
- High jump
- This item allows me to jump higher, not much besides that.
- Rainbow Wave
- Despite being the first one to be collected, this is the strongest of the 3 available projectiles in the game. This projectile has this property where it start out slow, but gets faster as it travels. Obtaining this item allows me to open blue, pink and orange doors.
- Rapid Fire
- This item allows me to shoot projectiles more quickly, which is decently useful for the run
- Gravity Snail
- This is, quite possibly, the most useful item in the whole game. Not only does it allow me to access previously inaccessible areas, but it also speeds up Snaily's movement by a LOT. It allows me to zip on the ground, speed up falls in both directions by jumping and move sideways more quickly when I can't zip. I basically stop walking normally after getting this item.
- Shell Shield
- If you've ever played this game casually before, you'd know that it's one of the least useful items in the game. If you're wondering, it just makes it so that you don't take damage while crouching. However, in this run, it is a very useful item, due to the fact that I can take damage on the borders without dying, which allows for many clips that would be impossible to perform otherwise. One problem is that the mechanics of border-crouching, as I call it, can be pretty finicky. If the crouch you're trying to perform is on the left or upwards, it's pretty simple and possible in almost every scenario, but, if the crouch in on the right or downwards, you need to be in the air (as in, not touching the "ground"), so if the crouch is far away from a jumpable position, it's impossible to perform.
- Boomerang
- This is the second projectile I get. It is weaker than the Rainbow Wave, but one advantage it has over it is that it moves faster in the beginning, which is useful if you have to, for example, destroy blocks that are directly in front of you, which is something the Rainbow Wave struggles at.
- Devastator
- This item makes my projectiles have bigger hitboxes, on top of dealing more damage. The increased damage output is very useful in the fight against Moon Snail. This item allows me to open green doors.
- Full Metal Snail
- This item makes me take less damage, which is very useful for casual play, but pretty much useless in this run. The only time where taking less damage would've been useful was before getting Gravity Snail, after that I never drop below 3 hearts so I was never in any danger related to health.
- Pea Shooter
- As it turns out, the first item you're supposed to collect is one of the last things to be collected. This projectile, while useless for dealing damage (at this point in the run), is actually pretty useful for block destruction, considering the fact that it's the fastest projectile in terms of movement. Unfortunately, it gets little use in the run.
Suggested Screenshot
Frame 7245
