Speedruns and Procedural Generation

A speedrun is playing a game with the intent to finish it as fast as possible. This takes a very deep knowledge of a game, often breaking the intended sequence of events or going outside the level geometry. Speedrunning has been popular since the days of Doom, and these days there’s a twice annual charity events, Games Done Quick.

Spelunky, despite (or because of) its procedural generation making simple memorization less useful as a speedrunning technique, has a fairly active speedrunning community.

Studying speedruns can teach you a lot about a game’s design. Speedrunning is frequently about understanding a game on a very deep level, and procedural generation is no different. Many speedruns involve taking specific actions to get the random number generator to an ideal state. Speedrunning a roguelike like Spelunky or Crypt of the Necrodancer requires the speedrunner to take it several layers deeper, uncovering the hidden patterns behind the generator and manipulating the game’s systems to find the fastest result.