How to Start Speedrunning: Beginner's Guide
Speedrunning looks impossible from the outside—people finishing entire games in minutes, executing frame-perfect tricks, hunting for milliseconds. But here's the truth: you don't start by chasing world records. You start smart, with the right fundamentals. This guide walks you through the beginner mindset that separates frustrated runners from steady improvers.
1 Start with a Game You Already Know
Pick a game you've already played and completed before—something like Mario Kart 8, a Souls game you're comfortable with, or any title you can play without consulting a guide. This is your foundation because you're not trying to learn the game and speedrun techniques at the same time. When you already understand the mechanics, story beats, and menu navigation, you can focus entirely on optimization. This removes a huge source of frustration: failing runs because you're lost, not because your technique is bad.
2 Master Movement and Tricks Before You Time Anything
Speedrunning relies on specific techniques—wall jumps, sequence breaks, glitch routes—that feel awkward the first hundred times. Don't try to hit a personal best while learning these; instead, create a dedicated practice save file or level where you drill each technique slowly and repeatedly. Spend a week nailing wall jumps at half-speed before you chain them into a speedrun attempt. Once a trick feels automatic, layer in the next one. This approach trades short-term gratification for long-term consistency, and you'll reach respectable times far faster than runners who try to learn everything mid-run.
3 Track Your Times with Splits Software
Download and learn LiveSplit or a similar splitting tool—software that times individual segments of your run in real-time. Instead of seeing only your final time, splits let you see where you actually lose time: maybe you're flawless on the first boss but lose 30 seconds on the overworld section. Review your splits after each run to identify your slowest segments, then target those in practice. This turns vague frustration into actionable focus, and you'll stop wasting effort on sections that are already tight.
4 Find and Join Your Game's Community
Almost every speedrun game has a dedicated Discord server or community hub where runners share optimized routes, tricks, and strategies. Join it, lurk a little to understand the culture, then ask questions and share your progress. Veteran runners can point you to the known-best routes in minutes—routes that took the community months or years to optimize. You'll also stay current as strategies evolve and new glitches are discovered. The time you save by learning from others instead of figuring everything out yourself is enormous, and the motivation boost from having people cheering you on is a bonus.
Speedrunning is a skill that compounds: each of these four habits builds on the others. A familiar game + solid movement tech + tracked splits + community input creates a feedback loop where you improve visibly, session after session. You don't need perfect execution or a rare glitch—you need the right starting point and a structured path forward. Pick your game, drill those tricks, start splitting, and find your people. The world record can wait.