Volgarr the Viking is a platformer game released in 2013, inspired by old arcade games like Ghosts 'n Goblins. Despite having a rigid gameplay, this TAS takes advantage of canceling techniques and micro-optimization to shave of almost 2 minutes from unassisted speedruns.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: libTAS v1.3.1
- Aims at fastest real time
- Completes Ending A (best ending)
- Takes damage to save time
- Genre: Platform
Main tricks
Landing cancel
Völgarr has a 10-frames landing animation, but by doing a precise slash in the air so that the slash ends just before landing, the slash can be canceled by either a roll, spear or slash, which cancels the landing animation. The most useful application is to cancel to a roll, but if you need to jump again, you can cancel to a slash and then jump when the slash has started. This method does not work for long falls (when the ground is shaking).
Another method to cancel the landing animation is by falling. During the landing animation you can still slowly move forward. If you land very close to an edge, you can move forward and leave the ground, which will cancel the landing animation.
Double jump cancel
Doing a backward spear cancels the double jump, which is useful to avoid hitting enemies (causing freeze frames) and to slash sooner for the landing cancel
Downstab chain
The downstab (pressing down or roll in the air) can be stopped by pressing up after damage, and another downstab can be initiated again. This is very efficient for bosses.
Early rope catch
Approaching a rope from its bottom makes you catch it from much further (see 8:17)
Boss chest manipulation
I manipulated a bit the randomness of chest drops by doing some movements, as the stage ends after you collect all drops
World 1
Taking or not the Mjölnir resulted in the exact same time, so I decided not to take it
World 2
It was faster to not take the second Mjölnir for the boss, and the one from World 3 is a bit faster to take
World 3
Rolling through the giant enemies was really tricky to do, because I had to throw many spears to delay its attack for enough time so that I can get close to him. I was lucky to barely get past the cycle at the middle of the second screen without waiting
World 4
I had to wait a tiny bit on the fireballs at the second screen. Also, it looks like I don't hit the boss as much as I could, but I needed him to do its charge attack as soon as possible because the falling rock does a lot of damage. Doing an extra attack would delay the charge and thus ending up loosing time.
World 5
I needed the Mjölnir for the second part of this stage, and I assumed this one was faster to take than the one from W4 first screen. I could get past the red bird by knocking him at the right time which temporarily disabled its hitbox. The second screen was governed by fan cycles :( I already had to wait on the first two vertical fans. Near the end I traded by Mjölnir to gave me enough time to take the other Mjölnir and reach the last fan in time. In the end I saved two fan cycles compared to the unassisted speedrun.
World 6
I didn't have time to take the Mjölnir here because I would loose one fan cycle. Thus I saved two fan cycles compared to the unassisted speedrun.
World 7
Hitting the glowing balls at the right spot gives you a good horizontal boost despite the freeze frames. The damage boost to reach a platform was unexpected for me, because loosing your helm makes your animations slower and is generally not interesting, but there was a chest just after, so I saved about 30 frames here.
Suggested screenshots: 8290, 20444, 34729
feos: The goal of this branch is explained
here, added the due label.
feos: Nice run and feedback, accepting to Moons.
