SIMPLE 2960 Tomodachi Series Vol.3 The Itsudemo Puzzle: Massugu Soroete Straws (SIMPLE2960ともだちシリーズ Vol.3 THE いつでもパズル まっすぐ揃えてストローズ) is a GBA puzzle game that's part of the Simple 2960 Tomodachi line of games published by D3 Publisher and developed by BeeWorks. In the main game mode, Straw the apprentice witch must align the stars in order to pass her graduation exam.

I came across this when I was searching for Mystery Triathlon games and I found it a neat game to play. I liked it enough to learn the mechanics well enough to reach the 1 million point score needed for the good ending in the main game modes. I made this TAS to see how much faster it can be done over unassisted play. For reference, my unassisted play times to reach that score is around the 20-30 minute range.

The goal of the game is to score points by making straight star lines, either horizontally or diagonally. Yellow stars can be shifted while orange stars are stuck in place until they shift color. Orange stars shift given enough time and star lines straightened. There's a regular timer that ticks down and ends the game if it gets to the end. Creating a straight star line both pushes back the main timer starts up a combo timer. During the combo timer, new star lines stop spawning and extra bonus points can be awarded by lining up more stars to extend the combo. If all the star lines are straightened out by the time the timer ends, either by itself or by pressing B, an all clear bonus is awarded and the main timer is reset. During the combo timer, the main timer is stopped except during a Speed Up round that happens every 10 all clears.

Normally, the best way to earn points is to get big combos which, while risky the higher the combo, greatly increases the points earned. Clearing the screen also gives an all clear bonus of 10,000 points. Straws also starts with a star bomb, which can instantly straighten out all the star lines and ignores orange stars. More star bombs can be earned by getting a 7 combo or higher.

There are multiple modes:

In most modes of the game, star lines cannot cross each other unless they've been straightened out. The second main game mode is an exception where the star lines can cross each other, with star spawns adjusted with that behavior in mind. This TAS uses the first main mode due to the strategy used making that difference moot.

I took a few strategies from this NicoVideo TAS of the caravan mode and will note them in their corresponding techniques.

Cursor movement

Horizontal cursor movement takes 4 frames and vertical movement takes 3 frames. Generally this means that vertical movement is slightly faster and usually more ideal, though this is more important for big combos rather than small ones.

TAS scoring

Taken from the NicoVideo TAS. The fastest scoring method in a TAS setting is to go for all clear bonuses with single combos as much as possible. I saw the other TAS after making a first pass of my own, which highlighted that while combo scoring is multiplicative, it's not as fast as just getting the all clears. There are 2 points where I go for a 2 combo instead which will be discussed in the next part.

Star spawn manipulation

Taken from the NicoVideo TAS. After getting an all clear bonus, the next star spawn can be manipulated by waiting on the all clear screen before clearing it. The first change is between 1-15 non-lag frames and the subsequent ones are 16 non-lag frames apart. There are a couple of cases in my run where going for a 2 combo was faster due to the fact that getting a good 1 combo spawn seemed to take slightly too long. The NicoVideo TAS waits longer on some screens than I did since their goal was to squeeze in as many points from the limited in-game time. Since I'm going for real time I just look for star spawns that can be straightened out quick enough such that the other star lines don't spawn.

There's an unused technique to star spawn manipulation that I used in my first pass. Manipulating star lines in certain ways will change how the other star lines spawn in. This can include starting a combo on a slightly different frame or simply moving a star line in such a way that would adjust or outright prevent another star line's spawn.

The video I posted uses an alternate input file that accesses the credits from the options menu after the ending sequence finishes up. I uploaded it in the user files here:

UserFiles/Info/637905646516120490

feos: Claiming for judging.

feos: Reaching the successful graduation cutscene seems to be the designed ending for this game mode (and it doesn't change at higher scores), even though it doesn't include the credits sequence, which can be watched any time from the menu. So similarly to #6324: Noxxa's PSX Grand Theft Auto 2 in 04:15.84, we have a movie that beats the game ASAP, and then there's a movie that shows the credits, meant for encoding (see right above). Accepting.

fsvgm777: Processing.