Before we get to that though, the real news: Awesome Games Done Quick 2020 raised $3,155,199.56 (about £2.3 million) for the Prevent Cancer Foundation! That’s around $700,000 more than the winter event raised last year, and the second ever Games Done Quick event to surpass the $3 million milestone (second only to last summer’s GDQ). Now onto the highlights! For a quick starter, here’s speedrunner Flarebear blasting his way through Celeste in just over 20 minutes. It’s speedruns like this that make Celeste look like a fairly straightforward platformer, which, if you’ve ever played it, you’ll know that it absolutely is not.
Next up is StoneAgeMarcus’ run of The Binding Of Isaac Afterbirth +. This one could be a bit confusing if you’ve never played the game, but the couch does an excellent job of describing what’s happening (and a lot is always happening) making it much more accessible to anyone thinking of picking the game up. StoneAgeMarcus manages to complete runs of all seven of the game’s characters in one hour and twelve minutes, with some extremely lucky and rather chaotic builds.
The last run I’d like you all to watch is Dark Souls beat in 45 minutes by Regole. This is another one of those speedruns that makes you feel like you want to have a go at speedrunning it yourself. The explanations for each section are clear and helpful, and the runner himself is so precise with his gameplay, it’s one of the most satisfying runs I’ve watched this AGDQ.
There were some really excellent moments at this year’s AGDQ and my only regret is that I can’t possibly write about them all. Having said that, here’s a few I wrote about last week - I highly recommend the Fallout Anthology speedrun for two straight hours of laughs and brilliant glitch explanation. And if you were one of the many awesome people to donate to AGDQ this year, congrats on helping beat a fundraising record for a truly worthy cause.