The Hat Chooses the Wizard is a homebrew GBA platformer made for the 2021 GMTK game jam. It revolves around a wizard who is trying to reach his missing staff, needing to traverse a series of platforms across multiple levels with his magic hat, which he can throw out and recalle which launches him straight towards it. This TAS aims to complete the game as quickly as possible while making very precise throws of this magical hat.

The fastest way to move around is obviously by throwing out the hat and recalling it. It can be thrown in all 8 directions which makes it a reasonably versatile tool for navigating some of the more complex spaces in this game. It also allows for a sort of double jump, where the game lets you do two recalls before requiring touching the ground for a third recall. Comparatively, walking is extremely slow, painfully slow, even. And the third movement option is jumping which ends up allowing for building a reasonable amount of speed; nothing even close to using the hat, though which is why you rarely see it used. Lag frames while playing the game casually are rare, however they consistently pop up when you try to throw the hat one frame before you're able to and then throw it on the first available frame. This and jumping or also throwing the hat after throwing it into the ground or a wall almost always generates lag. Lag was never much of a problem until the second half of the run which I will get to in more detail but this felt more unavoidable as I could not find a cause that could be circumvented.

To start with, we are given an almost straight line level to complete. In this level I came to the conclusion that throwing the hat out for 10 frames at a time was the fastest straight-line movement timing. With the small height change between the platforms, I did wait a couple of frames to fall before throwing out the hat, otherwise I would have been forced to wait before recalling the following throw.

For a visibly simple level, this one went through quite a few iterations before landing on the final one you see in the TAS. It sort of laid out the general common sense playstyle I settled for which was trying to stay as close to the ground as possible at all times. This was so that I would rarely need to worry about going over the two recalls limit. Earlier versions of this level had me going much higher than the ground which couold be fast but the solution I settled for was ultimately faster

I'm going to start skipping levels I feel are insignificant and I could skip this one but I felt it worth mentioning that this one starts with walking to the left for a few frames to give enough space for the diagonal hat throw

The first level that requires the camera to move and was what put me off TASing this game for a couple of years. I again stuck to the idea of trying to stay as close to the ground as I could as often as possible. 1-5 was sort of nice for this as once I figured out a rough sketch of how to do this level, it didn't become too tricky with only a couple of recalls needed to get up to each new platform. I did use in a couple spots, most noticeably at the end, the extra momentum gained by falling in the opposite direction to the hat that can save time over getting into a more favourable position.

While the level is still fairly short, it did require a bit more effort. This shortcut needs the hat thrown up towards the ending late and high enough so that it remians high enough by the time we hit the ground. RTA runs will start from the bottom but the TAS is able to throw it up from the height the wizard gets up to trying to avoid the slimes. It isn't quiet enough, though and some extra momentum is needed to reach the top so that is why I spend a little extra time falling

By far my absolute least favourite level in this TAS. If it weren't for all the lag it would have been fairly entertaining and the first 1-2s show what could have been. Unfortunately, for what I think is throwing the hat into the ground all the time and the sheer amount of slimes results in a couple pockets of lag frames I just wasn't able to avoid. I did do my best and the lack of slime kills is evidence of this. Looking past the lag, I did enjoy this level for being forced to catch the edges of platforms at every possible opportunity to regenerate recalls that could be used on the next level and I wish the game could have more levels that would have forced similar gameplay

2-4 felt like a mix of 2-2 and 2-3. It had the nice smooth movement of 2-3 that makes it a satisfying watch but also included 3 pockets of lag. Compared to 2-2, these felt more avoidable and I di attempt to cut them out as best as I could, but the alternative of just waiting out the time the lag frames would pop up (reminder that jumping also causes lag) ended up being much slower so I cut out the lag I could but settled for the ones in the final TAS. The main improvement to this game would obviously be to find some way to eliminate lag but I was not able to, at least for now

nymx: Claiming for judging.

nymx: A quick little run that has very unique game play. This run demonstrates a dominating performance over human ability, with a speed that is approximately 30 seconds faster against the existing WR.

Accepting to "Standard".

inconsistent: Processing...