Speedrun Bonanza: Summer Games Done Quick Now On

Summer is here, I'm told, though this weekend I had to buy a hat to keep off this Scottish rain. Still, the festive spirit of summer is alive and well in Summer Games Done Quick, the week-long livestreamed celebration of speedrunning games and raising money for Doctors Without Borders. The event kicked off yesterday, and will end on Sunday.

The schedule includes a good number of PC games with a few oddball choices, the PC lineup including Hotline Miami 2, Unreal, Super Noah's Ark 3D, Octodad: Dadliest Catch in co-op, and Minecraft. It's all streaming night and day on Twitch and archived on YouTube if you want to catch up on something.

Donating also lets you enter sweepstakes for prizes and put money towards unlocking bonus goals, such as setting extra conditions for the run or adding extra games to the list. It's all for a good cause too, of course. Last year's SGDQ raised $718,235.07 for Médecins Sans Frontières.

I watch the occasional speedrun myself anyway, but I like SGDQ because it exposes me to weird tricks in games I'd never think to check out. I'm looking forward to Tuesday's Tetris: The Grand Master set after Awesome Games Done Quick in January introduced me to how ridiculous high-level Tetris is.

The Humble Store is holding a sale to benefit SGDQ too.

Be warned: you may find some of these painful to watch if you're compelled to collect every item in games. The Resident Evil 4 run this morning was jolly impressive, but I was wincing at the runner skipped almost every item drop. Sure, stopping to pick them up would slow them down but... you can't just waste eggs like that! Eggs don't grow on trees! What if you need that egg later! The egg!