Break the Record: LIVE 5 – Meet BlueCadet-3 
What is your greatest achievement in speedrunning Spelunky 2?
Having good enough times to be invited to Break The Record Live, and the friends we made along the way.
Why exactly did you choose to run Spelunky?
A few years back, I got really into 2D indie metroidvanias and rogue-likes – Spelunky instantly hooked me with its buttery controls, extreme difficulty and fascinating secrets slash easter eggs. After completing all the in-game achievements, I still felt like I wanted more out of it. I had come across some videos by d_tea, krille, mazerak and kinnijup while looking around the internet for secrets and tips, that’s how I discovered what Low% was, and decided to take my first crack at speedrunning.
Some people are really put off by the massive amount of RNG in running rogue-likes, but this is exactly what makes it so interesting and fun in my opinion, since it’s random every time it just never seems to get old, and it’s a hobby that has really gotten me through a ton of pandemic quarantine hours this past year.
Are you going to play it safe or are you going for the first place?
Safe strats = lame strats [he laughs]. That’s something we like to joke about in the community, but I think I will need to be pretty risky to put up a time that will compete with the other contenders.
What do you think you need to do better? In other words, what tricks or optimisations are missing from your current performance?
I find that when I’m late in a run and on a fast pace that I can still get really anxious, which tends to lead to bad plays, thrown runs, and occasionally getting tilted. Staying dispassionate and detached from any run is something I’ve worked on steadily, because I feel like I lack the same level of consistency as some of the other top runners.
What makes you stand-out from the other runners?
Well, for one thing I haven’t managed to finish the Cosmic Ocean [category] yet! My PB is 7-95 and I just haven’t had the heart to go hard for it again just yet.
