A blindfolded speedrunner beat Sekiro in two hours on AGDQ
The speedrunning week has raised £2.5 million for a cancer charity
The speedrunning fundraiser festival Awesome Games Done Quick ended in the wee hours on Sunday, with one of its most spectacular runs coming in the final stretch. A speedrunner beat Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in just over two hours, which frankly is impressive enough to me. More than that, the runner known as "Mitchriz" was blindfolded from start to finish, guided by a combination of memory and feeling-out environments. In two hours! Ludicrious.
I enjoyed coming to realise how Mitchriz was playing. The foundation is memorisation, remembering level layouts and placements of enemies and items and such. This is augmented with hearing, picking up clues to his exact position from the noises made by things like pick-ups and long grass, striking with his sword to feel out walls, and telling what enemies are doing from their noises. Throw it all together and it's hella impressive. Complete it in 2:00:35 and what the hell!
I strongly recommend watching for yourself (parts, at least) and keeping an eye out for different tricks he uses in different places.
Dozens of speedrunners zoomed through over a hundred games across a week of 24-hour streaming, and you can catch up on them all on YouTube. AGDQ viewers have donated $3,423,507.85 (£2.5 million) for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, though donations are still open. It's already a new record for Games Done Quick.
GDQ typically run another zoomfest with Summer Games Done Quick in June, July, or August. The shows traditionally have been done live with streamers, commentators, and spectators packed into a hotel conference room somewhere in the USA, though it's been conductedly remotely from SGDQ 2020 onwards because of the global pandemic.
I didn't see much AGDQ this year, so what else would you recommend, gang?