About the Game
Curse of the Shadow is an NES homebrew platformer submitted for the Byte Off 2020 competition. Evil has awoken underground and your mission is to go through the underground and get to a room that says "THE END" to defeat all the monsters.
About the TAS
This TAS aims to complete the game as fast as possible without going out of bounds.
Walkthrough
We can press start on frame 27.
Screens 1-4 are just going to the right and jumping up a staircase. On screen 5, we have to climb down a ladder. This can be done very quickly by holding D and R together. On screen 6, you would usually need a key to unlock the door and you would have to backtrack for it, but this can be skipped using a very specific setup. First, we have to keep holding R until we touch the door, and then immediately turn around and climb the ladder back up to screen 5. From there we can fall back down while holding R and, hey presto, we've magically unlocked the door!
On screen 7, we come across the first 2 monsters. The ladder can be quickly descended by pressing D for 3 frames while still holding R. After that, we have to wait for 9 frames before accelerating to jump over the 1st monster. From there, we jump onto the ladder in front of us and jump twice more to reach the platform above. Screen 8 is quite interesting, as here we can use 2 damage boosts as we have 3 lives. Each damage boost saves 5 frames. We use one at the top for the 1st monster, and another at the bottom for the 3rd monster. Then we fall down another ladder by holding D for 3 frames. RNG is manipulated to get the best monster patterns by waiting before entering the next screen. Jumping over a monster has a 2 frame window.
Screens 9 and 10 are just holding R and jumping, but we do a bit of RNG manip to get both of the monsters on screen 10 to walk towards us. On screen 11, descending the ladder is very interesting. First we have to hold D+R for 3 frames, then let go of R 1 frame after letting go of D, then hold L for 5 frames, and then 7 frames later hold D for 5 frames and then D+R for 9 frames. I know I keep saying the word "frames", but that's how specific it is.
Screens 12-14 are just walking to the left and jumping, but we have to hold D for 1 frame on screen 12 to fall down the ladder faster and not bump the ceiling. RNG is manipulated just before screen 15. We can jump past the 2 monsters without slowdowns, but then we have to wait 7 frames before leaping over the last monster from the ladder. We want to make sure we don't jump back up to the platform above. Then it's a similarly specific ladder descend as seen on screen 11.
On screen 16, we weave around the wall and then jump over the monster to our right. ENG is manipulated just before screen 17, due to this it's just walking to the right and jumping. On screen 18, we have to manipulate RNG again, and then we mash A as fast as possible to climb the ladder quickly. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Who the hell jumps up a ladder?!" - AVGN
Screen 19 is only 32 frames long, but we do have to manipulate RNG before advancing to screen 20. Unfortunately I couldn't find a perfect seed where both monsters walk towards us, so we have to settle for a deficit of about 13 frames. Stopping to stab the monster loses 17 frames. Stopping to collect the heart loses 1 more frame, but we can sneak in another damage boost on screen 21 so it ends up being 4 frames faster.
On screen 21, even after manipulating RNG in our favour, we still have to wait 18 frames to jump up the ladder because the monster's in our way. Then we damage boost off the monster with that heart we collected on screen 20. The final screen is screen 22, where we jump onto the ladder from the middle platform and press A twice to get just enough upwards momentum to reach the end screen. This ends up 2 frames faster than jumping off of the rightmost platform.
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nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Thank you for making this. This was an interesting game...I only wish there was more of it. The only place that I thought was a problem, was the last enemy that you paused for to destroy. Well, I wasn't able to improve it. I absolutely think something is there, but its not enough to call out any optimization problems. Great job with the tricks in this.
