So you've decided to take on 20XX's speedrun achievement. Most players who've just picked up the game are probaby sitting in the 35-40 minute range. As you get used to the mechanics and what all the power ups do, you'll get a little quicker, but you're probably not quite there. For me, it took the right circumstances, the right RNG, and looking at the game from a slightly different perspective. In this guide, I'll explain some speedrun basics, what helps your time, and what can save you from your own mistakes early on.

If you're reading this guide, you're probably not familiar with the language around speedruns. Here I will explain the concepts I'll be talking about in later sections. If you've watched a GDQ (Games Done Quick) marathon, or are a speedrunner, you probably know and understand these concepts already, so skip over this part.

RNG
RNG stands for Random Number Generator (or generation, depending on the context). In 20XX, this is the random element that determines what order different parts of the levels spawn, what items spawn throughout the run, what level you start on, and what levels you can choose from at the end of each level. To get a "good" run, you'll need some luck with RNG, but it doesn't completely make or break a run; being adaptable to different equipment and buffs is part of being good at 20XX.

Skip
A skip is literally skipping part of the level, bypassing a set piece altogether. Most skips in 20XX involve jumping over walls, or walljumping past moving or disappearing platforms.

Damage Boost
A damage boost is a technique where the player purposely takes damage in order to progress more quickly than if they'd gone through a set piece or fought an enemy the normal way. While you might think this is a risky move in a game where you have 1 life, it can actually save you health in some cases. 20XX in particular likes to keep you in places or force you to follow winding paths blocked by spiked walls where taking 1 or 2 damage from the spikes could potentially save you 4 or 5 health running through a maze of enemies and pits with disappearing platforms to fall in.

PB
Personal best, specifically, your personal best time you've run the game in. I use this in reference to the game's official timer. If you want to get this achievement, you're looking for a PB of 28:00 or less.

Before you start chasing this achievement, You'll want to get some things out of the way. They aren't necessary, but they'll make your life easier. So here's a checklist to get you going.

• Complete a run of all 10 levels and beat the final boss
  
• Unlock all the power ups, especially the permanent upgrades
  
• Have enough Soul Chips from your last run to take the three upgrades offered to you
  
• Be comfortable with either Dracopent's Bound, or Oxjack's Blitz (the boots that double jump and air dash respectively)
  
• Be comfortable with the functional use of different powers (e.g. Using Force Nova to shut off beam gates)
  
• Know which items to despawn (Undevelop) to make your run faster, or make it more likely that you'll get your preferred buffs during the run
  
• Complete the boss rush (Rush Job) at least once
  
• Don't quit/restart when you don't get a good start to a run (practice makes perfect, and you never know how a run will end up until it's done. Also, soul chips for next time)

Now that we've taken care of that...

Certain items and buffs make your life way easier in 20XX, especially when it comes to speedrunning. In a nutshell, you want speed and damage. The idea of a speed run is to do everything quickly, so worrying about HP and energy are not an option. So keep an eye out for:

• Ninja/Hyper Sash
  
• Plumber's Hat
  
• Strongarm Band/Band of Might/Bracer of Battle
  
• Leafmetal Plating*
  
• Contractor Plus/Contractor Omega
  
• Skittery Smuggler**

*Leafmetal Plating boosts your jump height and speed, but takes 2 from your Max HP, so don't pick up too many of these unless you have lots of health.

**Skittery Smuggler takes nuts from the level floor and turns them into buffs. It takes a few extra seconds, but if you're lucky, it could make up lost time depending on what you get from it.

There are certain core augs that make speed runs a lot easier. I find Dracopent The Foul to be the best set for speedruns (because you get extra damage, and I'm more comfortable with double jumping than air dashing). That said, it's not always possible to get what you want in 20XX. There are key pieces that give you a better chance of getting through the game quicker, though.

Dracopent's Bound - Double Jump boots, enough said. I find these give you the most control in the air without sacrificing speed like Owlhawk's Feather, which slows you down, and Oxjack's Blitz, which I always seem to dash the wrong way with.

Oxjack's Blitz - Air dash boots. I'm horrible with these, and they've ended more than one run for me, but if you're good with them, they're a good way to boost over walls and avoid traps and enemies if you want.

Armatort's Shell - Grants knockback immunity. If you can afford the hits, this makes obnoxious beam gates and spikes less of an obstacle. In my own experience, I've found if you don't watch your health bar, you might not realise that your health is running low. Especially in level 9 and 10 where you can find yourself jumping through lots of beam gates to save time.

Oxjack's Ken - 40% faster dashes. This and the double jump/air dash make you a lot faster.

Dracopent, The Foul - The whole Dracopent set. The extra mobility from the double jump coupled with the permanent charged attacks makes runs a lot faster, especially for killing bosses. You can generally get the complete set 1/3 of the time, so it's good to watch for.

Different weapons do more damage, or have effects that make the game faster and easier. The standard weapons will do, but if you can get them in your run, each character has 2 weapons that stand out.

For Nina, that's the Forkolator, and the Star Beam. The Forkolator is my first choice, because it can clear out a range of enemies in front of you, especially with the Wallspook power up (shoot through walls). The Star Beam is helpful because it shoots in all four cardinal directions around you, so you can hit those pesky Flapps above and below you in vertical sections.

For Ace, the Spinning Glaive and the Plasma Bender are my favourites. The glaive is nice during the main levels because it acts as a barrier around you against weaker enemies while you jump. The Plasma Bender is the real time saver though. Most bosses can be killed in a few seconds with the Plasma bender, saving lots of time jumping in and out of combat avoiding attacks.

There are three powers I use in speedruns: Force Nova, Splinterfrost, and Shadespur. I generally don't use weapons as attacks as much as I do to make my life easier.

Force Nova (as mentioned before) can knock out the beam gates on the Sky Temple levels, and on levels 9 and 10. Splinterfrost disables fireball traps in Agnisort and level 9 & 10. Shadespur makes the disappearing platforms permanent.

I've seen a lot of people use Flame Shield to block shots in the more bullet hell areas, but I don't seem to have a problem with those sections slowing me down much. If that's more of an issue for you, I would swap it for something that you're better at dealing with.

Vera is very useful in Speedrunning. If you aim Vera downward after dash jumping, you can "fly" until you run out of energy while maintaining dash jump speed no less. The best technique for long trips that I've found is to tap the fire button every 1-2 seconds and maintain a certain height. You can skip whole sections of the level this way. Be careful however, since you can miss out on power ups that may be useful later on.

Soul chips are those things you get for killing the harder enemies, and can be spent when you either die, or finish a run. I used to think just grabbing the three augs and some tokens for the slot machine was the best use of these, but I found a better technique: Use the undeveloper to manipulate what you can get during the next run. Particularly, eliminating core augs you don't want to increase the chances of getting ones you do, and eliminating repros to increase the chance of getting the re-flapp (for fighting the end boss - see below). Also getting rid of augs that reduce your speed (Forcemetal Shell, for example) will keep the game from slowing you down too much if you tend to grab augs without thinking.

Now we're into the real time savers. Some of these can shave a good 20 seconds off a good player's run, depending on what level you're at (generally there are more obstacles in levels 5-8 than 1-4).

Wall skips

In Vaculab and Frostor, look for walls with spikes meant to deter you from jumping over them. These usually block vertical sections with lots of obstacles. If you can clear the spikes, you can jump over the wall and maybe even skip part of the next section as well.

In some parts of Vaculab and Frostor, there will be walls that you can jump up one side and skip to the last part of a large vertical challenge leading you right and left across a small area right to the top. Once you get there, just don't fall off any disappearing platforms or slip off any ice blocks. If you're not good at timing the disappearing platforms, use Shadespur to make them solid. Just do a quick dash and fire it across the screen.

In Agnisort, sticking to the left or right wall is usually faster than climbing moving platforms. Just dash jump to the exit to the next vertical section when you have to, and always remember the exit to those sections will be on the right. Exits going to the left are always shops or items behind a small obstacle challenge.

Slot Machines/Bonus Soul Chip "Skip"
Slot machines take a lot of time out of your run, especially if you have lots of tokens. Unless you're relying on it to grant you health to survive a boss fight, ignore these. The items you get are rarely powerful enough to make a big enough impact on your time to make up for the time lost. At the end of level 9, the bonus chest area has a downed Snomp that will generally grant 6-8 soul chips. It also takes 30 seconds to a minute to kill. Not worth the effort in a speedrun.

Sky Temple platform skips

Sky temple is unique in that there are rarely walls to climb. However, if you disable the beam gates with Force Nova, you can climb moving platforms much faster, and bypass areas you were intended to move right to left and left to right before being allowed to progress. You can also use air dash or double jump to get to platforms above you much faster. This is generally where extra jump height does more to reduce your time than movement speed.

You can also use air dash or double jump to move up the sides of areas with lots of stable platforms, then just jump across the top.

Level 9/10
If you've played through level 9 and 10, you know that they're both long and have some tedious sections.

There's not a lot you can do to skip the sections between solid ground in level 9, but using Force Nova to disable beam gates can save you a lot of time, or having armor points to ignore them with. Always make sure you touch down on solid pieces between platforming challenges or you'll be sent back to the last piece of solid ground you touched. This could be 3-4 areas back if you aren't careful.

Level 10, however, you can save lots of time with good jump height, force nova, double jump/air dash, or any combination of the aforementioned. In spots where you're supposed to drop, then climb vertically, you can usually avoid those sections by jumping the spiked walls or walls with beam gates on them. This is especially nice because you can usually avoid 2 sections at once with a double jump/air dash in the right spot. Just wait until you're about to land on another wall, and either jump again, or dash up and hold right.

As mentioned before, you can damage boost over spiked walls, but it can offer you an escape in areas with high concentrations of enemies. Just pick a good spot in the middle to get hit, then dash jump on to the next area before your temporary invulnerability runs out.

If you have armor points (the grey ticks next to your health), you can literally jump through hordes of enemies, spiked floors, and pretty much any other obstacle without worry because you don't have any knockback. Just remember that when they run out, you suffer knockback again. If you have Armatort's Shell, you can do this indefinitely. Well, until you die, so be careful if you're going that route.

The last thing to do is make minor adjustments to the way you move. Where possible, always dash jump. It's the fastest way to move across the screen. When you can't, dash on the ground, and try to time your jumps to avoid moving obstacles. Instead of timing and waiting for beam gates, jump over them when you can. Remember that you don't have to kill every enemy on screen - most of the time it's faster just to avoid them and move on.

The Fast Way
When you enter the last room, chase down Flat and instead of going under his legs, Vera boost over to his platform through his head. If you don't have either Armatort's Shell, or a few points of armour, you'll get knocked back, but keep firing, and you'll make it to the platform. Attack until he moves to the other side of the screen, then do the same. Rinse and repeat until he's dead. Then you just have to Vera boost or run through the last section. I recommend saving a couple points in energy to Vera boost over the last lava pits in one jump. It can be a frustrating part of your run if you fall in a couple times before reaching the escape pod.

The Easy, Kinda Fast Way
This glitch (though I didn't discover it) makes the last fight and the final escape sequence much faster than the "normal" fight. Here's how it works:

You'll need a Repro called "Re-Flapp", and preferably, no other Repros that attack enemies. Get as many upgrades to it as you can. When you get to the final boss room, run to the spot under his body, stand as close to the right hand set of legs as you can, and stand there. There's a glitch where instead of damaging the legs to make him lift them, the Re-Flapp damages the boss instead. He never resets the level so you don't have to chase him back and forth. I timed the fight, and from the time I got into the door to the time he died was about 1:30, with each attack doing 45 damage.



On top of that, the door you have to break down is already missing, and your helper friend is already rescued (he will fly to your location as the boss throws you at the wall as he dies). All you have to do is rush through the last area! If you don't make any mistakes, you can get through the escape sequence in about 30 seconds. Even a really bad run through that section should be under 1 minute for a reasonably experienced player.

Once you've played a few rounds and can comfortably run the game, and have all the augs unlocked, you can use the "undeveloper" to your advantage. If you get enough Soul Chips, you can tailor your aug drops to your play style for speed.

With a typical run, you can get up to 70 Soul Chips. But, if you do an Endless run to about level 35-40, you can have 200-300 Soul Chips. You can use the extra chips to undevelop items you aren't going to use or that slow you down ( e.g. Forcemetal Shell), and get only items that will help you the most (Contractor Omega, Bracer of Battle, Hypersash, etc.). This will help you cut down your times immensely, as you don't need to worry as much about drops you don't want.