The Neverhood completed in 27:36 with 136 segments. This is a segmented speedrun, meaning that it was recorded in many pieces separated by save/loads. This run is not intended to display skill, but more to push the game to its limits, and show what's possible.

Infrequently Asked Questions:

Q. How do you warp Klaymen around the place?
A. The game has set positions for where it'll put Klaymen when you load a game. Every time I can skip an animation or move Klaymen to a better spot, I simply save the game and then load it. Sometimes I need to wait before saving for a particular moment when some data is added to the save. This update moment usually coincides with a sound effect, for example a disk is registered as being picked up only after you hear the sound of Klaymen picking it up.

Q. But I can see you skipping parts of the game! Are you omitting any footage?
A. No. All loads match up with their corresponding save, and all saves that were used in the run were created and shown in the footage. All the skips were achieved by saving/loading, and by clever use of game mechanics.

Q. How do you skip cutscenes?
A. Almost every cutscene in the game is either skippable by pressing Space, or skippable the second time seeing it by pressing Space. By saving during a usually unskippable cutscene, the game thinks you've already seen the cutscene when you load that game, and you are able to skip it by pressing Space. The only exceptions to this are the decision and ending cutscenes right at the end of the game, which just don't respond to Space at all.

Q. Do all these skips really work?
A. Yes! You can try out every one of these skips for yourself in the game. There's this one big skip in particular later on in the run that you might want to try. It's where you backtrack and go on the kart to get a key. There you'll find the only window in the game where if you look out of it and save, you'll be right back at the start of the area when you load.

Q. How do you know the solutions to puzzles without even checking where you're supposed to?
A. Once you save on/near a puzzle, its solution is locked in. I can then load the save or even read the save file directly to see the solution. This run is about beating the game in the fastest way technically possible, and technically Klaymen could just be a really good guesser.

Q. How do you save/load so fast?
A. I load at the very start of a segment, and save at the very end of a segment. You normally wouldn't be able to save/load this fast if you were doing it all in one go. I did use some tricks to make it faster, though. I bound my Caps Lock key to Enter and Tab to Escape so that I could save/load without moving my hand. Later on in the run I also started sticking a small marker on my screen where the save button is, in order to find it more quickly.

Q. Are you using any mouse or key macros?
A. No. All input is done by hand. My only custom key setup is that I bound Caps Lock to Enter and Tab to Escape for more comfortable saving/loading.

Q. How are you running/recording the game?
A. I am running the original game (not the ScummVM remake) natively on Windows XP and recording it with Fraps. I'm using VirtualDub to edit together the individual segments.

Q. The video is 30 minutes long. How is this timed?
A. The run is timed from the first frame I gain control of Klaymen, and until the last frame you see my cursor when Klaymen makes his decision. Time spent in menus saving/loading was included in this time.

Q. How long did this run take to make?
A. I started working on this run over 3 years ago, but I got stuck on one of the RNG segments. With new technology to read save files, I was able to overcome my roadblock and finish the run. Over the three years I probably worked a solid 2 weeks on this run.

More detailed run comments, and tips for single-segment speedrunners, will be added here soon.

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