To note, all the causes for these issues are conjecture.

I have no formal game design experience nor any

true knowledge of the innerworkings of the game. I’m a just a speedrunner who’s played the entirety of
this game more than most. Note I’m not discussing some bugs that exist through unintended mechanics,
like hardlocks during zips.

General Gameplay issues

Game is very prone to droping and/or duplicating inputs. This is very hard to duplicate outside of combat
as it seems to be a direct result of the in game lag generated from hitting stuff.

On that note, there is sometimes substantial in game lag when hitting stuff. This is especially prevalent
when using Diamond Shotgun (East 8 door reward). This is easily noticeable in boss rush as this lags the
in game timer too. It is possible this was intentional, but the result is that inputs too close to some attacks
get eaten. The game appears to not register any inputs done when it fails to render a frame.

If you have both shotguns equipped, you can fire one, swap, fire, swap and repeat to get out a whole bunch
of damage fast. However, if you do this too fast from full (assuming all ammo upgrades) it stops with ~2.5
ammo left and eats all your gun inputs for multiple seconds.

Phantom shotgun. For some reason if you press the fire button during shotguns internal cool down and
continue doing actions in that time (only works in a fight, definitely related to lag somehow) it’ll fire the
shotgun as soon as the ICD is up. It will still fire the shotgun regardless of if you’re actually allowed to fire
a shotgun at that moment. You can see a clip here: https://clips.twitch.tv/RelentlessGiftedMelonHotPokket
~10 seconds in, bit prior to my death. I fire my shotgun while charging a charge slash. This is ordinarily
not possible.

Dash bias bugs. I’m not going to detail them all here, there’s too many to mention. If you actually plan on
fixing these I’m willing to go through the game listing them with video clips. While there’s a ton of spots
where dashing doesn’t work as intended, the biggest change I’d recommend is removing the bias toward
enemies. ESPECIALLY with phantom slash. You can get stuff like this:
https://clips.twitch.tv/EasyCautiousClintmullinsUnSane It tries to bias me toward where reapers going and
sends me off the edge. Note, I use mouse dash. That was a full 180 degrees from where I was aiming.

If you get hit at the same time you dash/phantom slash it will send you dashing either straight up, straight
right, or straight left regardless of where your dash is actually aimed. The direction appears to vary based
on room (for example Archer will always send you straight right) but straight right appears to be by far the
most common.

Boss Rush is significantly laggier than the counterparts in the main game with the exception of archer
which is less laggy. We’ve been unable to determine why.

There are some issues with switching weapons too fast mid fight. Sometimes it refuses to acknowledge my
inputs. In some cases it’ll jump multiple weapons over on adjacent frames (which far as I know shouldn’t
be possible). This appears to be related to in game lag as this is more prevalent in boss rush than main
game.
Grenades sometimes refuse to come out. No consistent criteria for allowing grenades has been found.
Unsure if they’re always throwable and them not coming out is a bug, or if they’re not always throwable
and sometimes coming out when they’re not supposed to. (personally I’d prefer always throwable but
that’s just my opinion.)

Charge slash gives inconsistent ammo refill. It’s possible there’s criteria for how much ammo you get (i.e.
where on the blade you hit them) but I’ve been unable to find a common denominator.

It’s possible to proc Reflect Slash on your own bullets. This is difficult for normal drifter but in a
significantly laggy situation is doable. This will happen all the time on altie due to her increased range, and
effectively makes buying reflect slash on her useless since it eats stamina. Even if you don’t know about
plinking this is still a problem for casual players.

Phantom slash has some serious issues with where it aims when enemies and/or breakable objects. I
frequently have phantom slashes 90 degrees or more from where I aimed (and I use mouse dash so I have
visual representation.

Phantom slash cannot be used over gaps unless you are right up at the edge of the platform. If you aren’t at
the edge, you’ll fall through the floor upon making it to the other side.

Any lag on the games part changes chain dash timing. In addition there are some issues with ledge
interaction. In rare instances dashing parallel and right up against a ledge will send drifter back to his
starting position.

If you slide at the end of a chain dash and fire your shotgun behind you, you gain pretty substantial speed.
This is cool, and I’d recommend keeping it, but it exists and if ya’ll haven’t tried it it’s pretty darn fun.

Dash reflect feels inconsistent. Consider increasing the frame window for activation. Furthermore (and
more importantly) it’s possible to activate dash reflect on your own bullets.

Stab Slash feels very buggy. This may be functioning as intended but I’d recommend changing it if so. If
you stab slash something that can’t be pushed, drifter goes flying way back. While this is consistent
enough it seems like an intended behavior, it is frustrating enough to the player that I’d suggest removing
it. The reason this is a major issue is Stab Slash seems to have a ridiculous amount of input priority, you
can’t sword slash anywhere near a dash in more laggy situations without getting stab slash. Especially as
Phantom Slash (one of the most useful abilities) appears to have low input priority. It’s very very possible
to input Phantom Slash in a fight and have stab slash come out.

In a similar vein, it’s also possible to input Phantom Slash and have reflect dash come out if you’re close
enough to a projectile.

If you open your menu and quit on the same frame you die, it drastically increases your load times and
offsets the camera upon loading a room until you completely restart the game.

If you S+Q during any judgement cutscene, the noise he makes stays permanent until you completely quit
the game.

On that note, the game also has some serious audio balancing issues. If you have no idea what I’m talking
about I’m happy to go into further detail.

A LOT of saves don’t work as intended. Almost all saves can be dashed past, some can be walked past,
and a handful are just placed poorly and you have to move in a specific way in order to get them. If you
actually have intentions to fix the particularly egregious ones, I can go through and get video clips.

There are slight physics differences between 30 and 60 fps. These aren’t anything to be TOO worried
about (especially because as a speedrunner all the differences save time) but if you’re curious I can go
through what I know.

There’s a random hole in the floor here where there appears to be floor
https://clips.twitch.tv/DaintyDeadStorkRickroll

Also on that note, there’s a lot of places where if the bottom is covered in a wall it’s opposite of the
surrounding terrain. I.e. if there’s solid ground covered area is often a bottomless pit and if it’s a
bottomless pit covered area is often solid ground. This might be on purpose, but if not wanted to bring it to
your condition.
If you open the menu on the same frame you hit a load zone it hardlocks the game. You are unable to open
menu, you have to cntrl+alt+delete.

If you receive a hard knockdown either from a bonk or an attack, any subsequent hits will reset the hard
knockdown regardless of if they were meant to hard knockdown or not.

2 bugs here. HIGHLY suggest muting the vod as i was....more than a bit salty at the start.
https://clips.twitch.tv/GlamorousVainSeahorseFloof

Ok first off, if you die in this room it sometimes has you spawn here over the bottomless pit rather than at
the end of where the spawned path would go. If you hit that save at 1 health and it saves you there, it
permanently softlocks your game. I unfortunately don't have a clip of this. In addition if the game doesn't
know where to put you it throws you to the entrance of the room. In some cases this softlocks the room and
requires you to exit and re-enter. In one case (east, upper right of the 3 key door room) the "entrance" is
actually the completely seperate entrance you come in a bit past the 3 module door.

Hitting a section where you're supposed to drop down a cliff from the side can have some very weird
interactions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA5sLLGEfJM

Boss Specific Issues

North Boss
The area above north boss is one of the worst instances of dash bias in the game. Just try to chain dash
through there (especially on left side) and you’ll see what I mean.

West Boss
Hitboxes are not quite what they appear to be visually.

Occasional significant lag when entering the fight (appears to be tied to walls raising.

In rare instances, when summing a guy from the crystal he’ll be close enough to the crystal that his hitbox
is sorta inside it? Firing guns here will just result in them bonking off the crystal.

Mimic:
In the room with the fake module fight, if you slash a box and spawn a spider, it crashes the game if it
attacks you while you’re activating the module. This is one of two known crashes that gave crash
messages.

Reaper:

Other crash message. If you kill Reaper (Cool hat guy) while he does the attack with his scythe rotating
around him, it crashes the game when it tries to return to him. This does not happen with any of his other
scythe throwing attacks.

Merlin (Bullet Baker)

Rarely happens and not an issue for casual players even when it does, but if you stand exactly where he’s
trying to go, he’ll just go around in circles for about 5+ seconds without attacking. Obviously this isn’t
game breaking but makes the fight a bit easy.

South Boss (Archer)

She can sometimes be killed by her mines, sometimes they leave her at 1. This might be intentional.

Judgement
Holding up while interacting with Judgements door sends drifter flying off to the right. If you keep holding
you end up REALLY far out of bounds (fortunately this does not trigger the out of bounds death timer for
some reason). If you are off screen the cutscene prior to judgements fight plays really slowly, losing you
upwards of 30-50 seconds in a speedrun setting and REALLY confusing some casual players. In rare
instances interacting with the door while sliding will similarly send you flying off screen. This last one is
significantly more common on Alt Drifter for some reason.

Time in between his phases (i.e. darkness phase) appears to vary. This doesn’t effect casual players
obviously but a lot of speedrunners would appreciate if this was more uniform.

If you end a judgement phase (i.e. push him to the health gate where he disappears) during his attack where
he charges at you, the hitbox lingers for multiple seconds and can be walked into.

If you take a hard knockback at the same time (not sure if it’s frame perfect or if there’s a window) you
land the final sword slash on judgement, it softlocks the game. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/134095223
This is possible under normal circumstances, ignore how fast the actual kill is. Any knockback can cause it
and he has a lot.

Soccer Kid:
Is beatable Kappa

Enemy specific issues

Leapers will often “spawn” before they actually spawn. In rare cases they can actually attack you
https://clips.twitch.tv/ResoluteThoughtfulMelonHeyGirl

If a rocket guy hits you as you’re falling into a pit, and knocks you onto solid ground you don’t take
damage from either the rocket or the fall. In rare instances this skews your Z axis either allowing you to
walk through all walls, or the game thinking you’re out of bounds and killing you.

Exhibit A) https://clips.twitch.tv/InventiveRelentlessCheesecakeShadyLulu

Exhibit B) A casual player Skewed themselves enough it looked like they were being stopped by an
invisible wall bit under a drifter height outside the door. They were there for a few seconds and then the
OOB timer killed them. https://clips.twitch.tv/PhilanthropicPluckyAmazonFrankerZ

Robots
There's a frame during their animation you can shotgun them and send them flying
https://clips.twitch.tv/WildHealthyWolverineBlargNaut
Alt Drifter Specific Stuff
Her interaction with ledges is..... really abhorrently bad. We're assuming that dash resets on ledges WERE
intentional, but most ones that work on regular drifter will just have her fall off the edge. Even worse she'll
usually respawn again off the edge. My best theory is that she has a substantially different hitbox than
regular drifter.

Altie's attacks VISUALLY can go through walls and she doesn't bonk with attacks, however they can't
damage stuff on the other side.... usually. There are some switch's she can hit.

If you use altie and then load up normal drifter, normal drifter has a pink/red sword.

Suggestions
My personal things I think would be positive changes for the better. Feel free to ignore all this.

I personally think that adding the ability to turn off upgrades a la Super Metroid would be a great feature.

Consider replacing Diamond Shotgun with Regular Shotgun in midrange boss rush.

I know this is probably impossible, but global leaderboards for boss rush would be really sweet.
This is only a speedrunner thing so not a priority, but a lot of people would love it if you included a way to
bind the aim button from controller on K+M. TL;DR some skips are controller only because of this.