2015 Notes:

This is pretty recent! I'm super proud of this, and still get excited watching this video.

I had bought a video capture card earlier in the year and recorded myself playing a handful of games, but all my content ideas were still in their infancy & planning stages. I had thought about recording short strategy/walkthrough videos and whatnot, but nothing came to fruition yet.

While I was playing bit Dungeon ii for the first time and really enjoying it, after I beat it for the first time, I thought to myself, "I bet I can get through this game a lot faster - like around 90 minutes." I drew some maps and started playing the game some more. Soon, I realized, "Oh I can definitely do this in under an hour." That took just a little bit more practice!

I looked around on Youtube, and I found my only competition - someone clearing the game in 31 minutes. I watched and studied his video, only to find that he skipped the final boss! Sure, killing the final boss is not strictly necessary, but how lame! Also, skipping this boss means you can play with a much lazier strategy. I knew I had to annihilate this guy's time too.

I ended up putting about 40 hours into the gameplay, and maybe 8 hours into the video editing and commentary. The commentary was tough for me because I haven't really recorded my voice since I did college radio. I went through my recordings with a fine-toothed comb (i.e. Audacity) and edited out at least 50 "um"s and other filler words. Since then, I've been hyper-aware of my vocal tics.

I set my goals low for this run - I wasn't trying to get the best time ever, or the most views ever, just trying to make a positive contribution to the very small BD2 community. And you know what? The creator of the game commented "omfg awesome" on the video, and that's all I really needed for validation!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s5NjnTtINE

Hi! This is my first attempt at speedrunning. I love watching speedruns - been watching since Quake Done Quick, and binge on AGDQ and SGDQ each year. I've always been intimidated by the time, dedication, and skill of the top speedrunners. But after playing this game, I decided to "just do it" and it ended up being the most fun I've had playing any game in a long time! This was a perfect newcomer game and I loved thinking about all the micro-optimizations I could make to the run.

I commentated about speedrunning and explained the game mechanics in case you've never seen this game before.

Hope y'all get a kick out of it :)