Random: This 17-Minute Stardew Valley Speedrun Doesn’t Go As You Might Expect

If you’re a keen follower of the speedrunning community then you’ll be aware that there are two distinct camps: those who play by the rules and those who don’t.

While many speedrunners focus on sticking within the rules of the game to earn the best time, others look for exploits and hacks which allow them to shave minutes off their total completion time, and that’s exactly what Olenoname did during a Stardew Valley speedrun attempt during Awesome Games Done Quick 2022.

Things start oddly, with Olenoname typing out a character name that’s so long it can’t even fit on the screen. This name is actually part of the speedrun as it’s full of item codes – because other residents in the game gift you items depending on the hidden codes in your character’s name.

The next step of the speedrun is to exploit a bug which allows Olenoname to access the inventory menu during a cutscene so all of the aforementioned tools can be jettisoned to make room for Mega Bombs, which are then used to blow up the player’s garden. Another resident’s house is also destroyed to streamline the process. Brutal.

There are a lot of other cool tricks involved here, and we’d recommend you give the original stream a watch to see them in action.

The week-long, 24-hour event raised a total of $3,416,729 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, which is an AGDC record.