Environmental Station Alpha is a metroidvania from 2015 created by Hempuli (who later did Baba Is You). As it features a hookshot, it instantly becomes a great game.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: libTAS 1.4.6
- Genres: Action, Adventure, Platformer
- Normal Ending
- Forgoes major skip glitch
- Takes intentional damage
- Uses easiest difficulty
Comments
This run aims at completing the normal ending (called Virus Ending) of the game. This run does not use an OOB glitch that could be used to finish the game by going from the first boss directly to the last boss by navigating OOB (best unassisted speedrun is 6 minutes). This run also uses the Easy difficulty, which gives more starting health, hence giving the player more possibilities to take damage to save time.
The game version used is not the original version from 2015, exported through Multimedia Fusion (which does not have a Linux port), but the 2024 version exported using Chowdren. The port was performed by the original developper, as issues arose with new MacOS version not supporting the original game. The two versions are very close, the main change was switching from 55 fps to 60 fps.
Comments as subtitles: UserFiles/Info/638759185808920825
Tricks
Text storage
To perform text storage, we open the map after a textbox appears (though cutscene or interaction), and close it using the shoot button. If done successfully, we get control back while the textbox is on screen. We can still go through texts with the shoot button. This has multiple applications:
- Closing the last textbox activates the event of the current room
- We can delay an event until we reach a certain room
Teleporter storage
This works exactly the same way as text storage. We store the teleporter screen while getting control back. Thus, we can teleport from any room.
Damage boost
Taking damage gives a slight vertical boost, which may be enough to go over some obstacle that we were not supposed to cross
Hook control
The hook in this game has very little control. We don't control the angle, the strength or when it detached. We take advantage of the fact that the angular velocity is constant, so a longer hook means more distance travelled. We can inscrease the size of the hook by shooting while falling, so that we are lower when the hook connects.
The only thing we can control is from which position does the hook is actually shot. The hooking is always shot from the character hands, which can be slightly moved by looking up or down. Generally, we want to look forward so that the hook is shot further, but looking up or down gives slightly different positions, so that it is possible to shoot one frame earlier or later.
Hook jump
By pressing hook exactly one frame after the second jump of the double jump, this gives us a great vertical speed. The hook must not touch anything, even a surface that it wouldn't connect to.
Walkthrough
Double jump upgrade
A first text storage is performed right at the start, which is kept until the first boss, to activate it as soon as we enter the room. We go left and down to activate the doors, by using another text storage. After getting back up, we skip a second boss by getting to a post-game secret room by using a damage boost. This leads us directly close to the double-jump upgrade.
Early V-dash
With the double jump, we go back up to access the part that contains the vertical dash upgrade, which we are supposed to get much later in the game. Using a sequence of four damage boosts, we are getting through all the rooms until the v-dash.
Hookshot
We go back the intended path, and throught the hot zone to reach our second boss. Some RNG manipulation was performed so that he starts swinging with the good angle and velocity to reach the top left when we reach it also. Then, we can see that the v-dash deals a lot of damage to end the phase 1 quiclky. There is no way to speed up the second phase which is like an autoscroller.
Fun fact: in the early version of the game, the first terminal was randomly spawning on the left or right of the screen. If it were to spawn on the right, speedrunners would loose about 8 seconds because the fight would end on the right of the screen. After complains to the game developper, we modified the game so that the first terminal would always spawn on the left.
Another fun fact: it is possible to skip this boss if you have the horizontal dash, by going over the boss trigger. It goes from the floor to almost the ceiling, leaving one tile empty. I worked hard trying to get it with only the current items, but couldn't get it.
Teleporter
We go back and down to the next area, to grab the teleporter card. On the way, we make a detour to vist a room with a teleporter, so that we will be able to teleport there later.
Charge shot
We go up and left to the underwater section, to grab the charge shot which is mandatory one room much later :(. In our way, we take the Plasma Field using a hook jump. In the old (Multimedia Fusion) version of the game, getting this item was even easier, because the v-dash was reseting after a screen transition. This item will be useful as an extra source of damage against the remaining bosses.
Two small tricks are used underwater: continuously pressing jump gives a very small horizontal boost, and getting hit gives more vertical speed than just swimming up.
After getting the charge shot, we can skip the next boss by avoiding all the platforms and using a combination of hook jump and v-dash.
Security Overmind
To reach the next boss, which is required to access the end, we activate teleporter storage and go to the computer that powers up the station. By teleporting just after activating it, we skip a boss, and also the station is not powered on until we close the textbox. Then we go down past the door that would be closed if power would be active, to skip another portion of the game.
We now just need to activate the four computers. We skip some walking by going from bottom-right directly to top-right computer.
Security Overmind boss is basically an autoscroller. There is just one possibility to speed it up: during the first phase, it may land weirdly, acting as if it was landing twice, so it skips a jump. It is not known exactly how it works, it is loosely tied to the landing position but has other unknown factors. I only managed to trigger it once during the fight, and nobody ever witnessed it happening twice.
Ending
We can now reach the last boss. We use the hook to go through a thin platform. The three phases of the boss are each performed using a combination of plasma field, v-dash, and an alternance of charge shot and single shot (sequence that deals the most DPS)