Submission #7687: ikuyo's PICO8 Star Anise Chronicles: Oh No Wheres Twig?? in 03:05.50

To generate the executable, open a PICO-8 cient, type FOLDER and drop the .p8.png file for the game on this folder. Then use the LOAD anise_wheres_twig-2.p8.png and EXPORT anise.bin commands to generate the standalone executables (launch anise.bin/linux/anise from libTAS). Cartridge can be found on PICO-8 BBS: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=76397

To make the movie sync, open ~/.lexaloffle/pico-8/config.txt and set foreground_sleep_ms to 5.

Star Anise Chronicles: OH NO WHERE’S TWIG?? is a non-linear platformer game developed by indie game dev, programmer and furry extraordinaire eevee and released in May 2020. The game is a tribute to the late Twig, one of her cats. It stars Anise, another cat of hers, as she embarks on a little adventure to find her missing Branch Commander.

This movie aims to beat the game as fast as possible, and it has been developed in close collaboration with the RTA WR holder for the game (which is also me). The run is being performed on PICO-8 0.2.5C, using the freely available .p8.png cart to create a Linux executable. It is worth noting that a speedrun edition of this game exists, which removes most of the text and adds RTA-styled splits. However, I deemed it best to use the original release as the text is cute and due to some tricks involving ability activating, a route in the speedrun edition would be substantially different.

Since the game is very straightforward in terms of execution and glitches, I’ll be diving directly into the route and explain relevant tricks as we go along.

After the intro dialogue, we’re left in control of Anise with no options other than moving left or right. Jumping is a required upgrade and so we head directly towards it. Even here, however, there’s some basic optimization: we slow down before the first fall to avoid falling all the way to the bottom floor. This is done because if we did, we would bonk against the floating platform and lose our precious movement speed for too long. Later, we take an aggressive turn to fall as close to the left as possible. I get Anise at the wall since from that position we can keep the fall all the way to the jump upgrade, requiring to land only as we collect it.

In order to get to Twig, we must get some blocks out of the way, each controlled by a different Luneko, which will ask help from us obtaining some kind of item. Once we’ve obtained jumping, we head directly to the first of these items, the bag. The maneuvering here is fairly straightforward, and as soon as we collect the bag, we head straight to Cheezball and give him the bag.

Pressing X as we carry an item allows us to use that item. While most items and actions are instant, actions that play sounds (such as the ba) won’t start their action until the sound stops playing. So here, we can use the bag while in the room before Cheezball, and get it active the first frame we're in the room. We activate the item during the room transition this way, as Anise is already in the new room as soon as the transition starts. This technique doesn’t save time by itself, but there is a soft cap on how fast we can activate abilities, and doing so early when possible allows us to make use of more of them. We grab the ability to meow and head out of the room.

Meowing causes Anise to either interact with other Lunekos, make some flavor comments and such. But most importantly, meowing causes doors in any room to open, opening up new paths. It’s also worth noting that Anise keeps her position relative to the door when moved to the new room via door, so we can use this fact to get some extra optimization out of door transitions.

We climb thru the door rooms, get out and meet Nyapo-ion, who asks for food in exchange for removing his set of blocks. We then embark on another fetch quest, after receiving a useful key.

We resume the climb and make it to a room with two doors. Here is a good showcase of the usefulness of item buffering. By hitting the meow earlier in the room, we have just enough time to switch into the key and use it right as the doors start opening, allowing us to both get the two required item usages done as fast as possible and also keeping our midair movement speed as we make it thru the door.

After navigating the maze of door rooms, we collect a slice of pizza and make it back. We meet again with Nyapo-ion, who delivers on his promise and removes the blocks. We then delve further into the room and obtain the paw.

With the paw, we can achieve two things: one, knock over little jars all around the world, and two, activate levers located across several rooms. Using these, we can finally reach the top area of the world, but not before accidentally getting ourselves dirty with some volcanic ash. This causes Purrl to not want to hang out with Anise due to the evident grossness, and she ends up creating a new set of blocks! These lead us directly to the final upgrade of the game, the Telepawt.

The telepawt is an interesting twist on blink mechanics. It will teleport Anise to the opposite side of the room relative to the center of the screen (mirroring her position left to right and vice versa), while preserving her vertical position and momentum but flipping her facing direction. This is an instant ability, disabled only if using it would place us inside any kind of collision. As such, this is by far the fastest form of movement for covering horizontal distances unless we need to make it to the middle of a room. We showcase its utility as we move to a nearby waterfall to get ourselves clean. We quicly return to Purrl, having avoided getting dirty again thanks to our newfound ability to teleport. She finally agrees to remove her blocks, and from here, we can quickly move to the final room, reaching Twig and finishing the movie as we close the final text box.

feos: Claiming for judging.

feos: Removed caps since what looks like an official name (not in-game) doesn't have it.

ikuyo: Cancelling due to desyncs. Will look into it later.

feos: It syncs now!

feos: Claiming for judging.

feos: Looks good, accepting.

fsvgm777: Processing.