Emerald Squad (Demo 2) - Any% Speedrun in 3:50.05
7Timing starts on first character select and ends when King Red is defeated. Might actually be 3:49 since I timed it during the run instead of on the recording. Also there's no official run timing yet and I use this one because I have a pet peeve for speedrun timings where you don't have real control for quite a while after starting the timer. Looking at you, EarthBound with your 70+ second wait.
Demo for a cool game my friend Eve (@DarkerJenny_) has been developing for the past year or two now. It's an indie platformer game with inspiration from classic Game Boy platformers. Stages are pretty elaborate, and there's quite a lot of paths to take. There's 5 playable characters, though I only use 3 this run.
Harmony is your jack of all trades, master of none. Has decent damage with her charge attack, can do well in platforming sections with her aerial attack, and has a unique guard that blocks everything. However all of these traits are done better by other individual characters.
Helios is the speedrun character, and as such the one I use in Stages 1 and 3. His attack is a forward dash with his spear, that's faster than walking (everyone has the same speed). He has a fast fall by pressing Jump in the air, useful for sections where you need to head down but there's a wall in the way. He also has a mechanic where he builds up heat by moving around, and when it's at above half, using your attack shoots out a fireball, and walking around leaves a small fire trail. His damage is still pretty subpar in my opinion though.
Ann is your ranged fighter. She falls much faster than the rest of the cast, making certain paths inaccessible to her. However she's the only one who can break some certain crates, making other paths exclusive to her. (So she's basically Knuckles in Sonic 3?) Very good damage, especially for a ranged character. She can also fire a shield forward that blocks projectiles.
Selene says bye to necessity of platforming skills with her double jump. (Ever heard of the meme where trans people can double jump? Yeah it's on full display here. No, I'm serious.) Ok damage with flame pillars, but they have a cooldown, obviously.
Jade is pure raw power. Her hammer does absurd damage (and a shock wave for less in front of it), most likely killing any enemy that isn't a Shadow Rook (the golem-like enemies) in one shot. You can even power through bosses (so far) without a care in the world, they'll die before you die. Pretty obvious who's being used for bosses in speedruns. Mostly. I dunno, Ann might have an advantage in an unseen boss. She also has a barrier that blocks projectiles, but not all attacks like Harmony's one does. On the flipside, it can also be used offensively.
There's also powerups.
Collecting one with an arrow gives you a jump height boost. Combining this with Selene's double jump gets you absurd height, making her able to skip a huge portion of Stage 2, which is why I use her over Helios there.
Collecting a fist icon powerup gives you a boost in attack power.
The + items are just extra health. You can carry 5 more than your default HP, too.
Collecting an Emerald Medallion (which turns into the light EX icon in the bottom right) gives you an upgrade to one of your attacks or attributes. Harmony's charge attack sprouts 3 geysers, Helios doesn't passively lose heat by standing still, Ann charges faster, Selene shoots out 3 fireballs with double jump, and Jade gets a 3x bigger shockwave. It also gives you a passive auto heal, however it won't heal up to more than your default.
Some of these powerups can be found scattered across the stages, or from enemy drops. These enemy drops can be made consistent, actually. Basically you can enter any boss with an attack powerup every time, making Jade make quick work of them under 6 seconds... As for the details on how to make the drops consistent... well, I'll leave it a secret.
Some powerups also come with ribbons on them, those either have a greater effect in the case of health pickups, or last longer for the others.
There's also a secret stage in this... Wonder where it could be???
I know, but I'm not telling you.
Also the music bangs. Characters also good. Selene is just like me fr fr
Go play this demo version here: https://dark-jenny.itch.io/emerald-squad-demo-2
Follow the game's Twitter here: https://twitter.com/EmSquadGame
My Discord server: https://discord.gg/Fwdc8Kdyh5