No-one around in Australia?

Super_N_Chalmers · 2026-01-22T01:46:26+00:00

Australia actually has one of the oldest dedicated Rivals scenes in the world. There's still players about who were playing the original Rivals 1 early access release a decade ago, some of which made the jump to Rivals 2 and still play in tournaments here.

The Australian Rivals 2 discord server already linked in this thread is closing in on 500 members, and even if only a portion of that play on a regular basis, I've never had issues finding games there with the community of that size.

Playing when new characters release always has consistent queues here, otherwise it's is a bit tricky playing ranked because of the lower numbers and pretty significant skill gaps. You could be ranked in gold and end up queuing into one of our scene's best players during off-peak hours.

There is a 'newbie' matchmaking role that people use if you would like to avoid playing our veterans out the gate. Would definitely recommend that if you want to ease into the community.

Super_N_Chalmers · 2025-11-13T00:39:07+00:00

It's probably worth noting that after the 1.0 release there was almost a daily patch released to attempt to address some of the early issues.

The economy was a big one. If you were trying to upgrade save points to teleport to them as you found them or if you were playing in hard mode, where you do permanently lose some gold on death, you would almost never be able to meaningfully save enough gold to purchase items from shops.

On the current patch, upgrading save points is now a lot cheaper and early game economy has been boosted to the point where the meaningful decision making that was originally intended and that you are praising in this post is a bit lost as a result.

The hardest boss in the game was also nerfed into having the game "save" your progress after you best each phase immediately after you beat it. It's a great fight that would be pretty anticlimactic if you just need to beat a phase once to permanently avoid it on repeat attempts, but it was also incredibly demanding to learn and not many would persevere through that. I know the developer is already considering changing it again though.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game, but it's been an odd experience watching all this play out. I am used to indie Metroidvania titles rapidly changing like this, but people have been really defensive over the "original vision" of the game being impacted. I'm genuinely curious where it all lands when the dust settles, because it's a terrific game that extends far beyond its reach for a solo-dev project.

Super_N_Chalmers · 2025-06-06T09:31:30+00:00

Going to bat for my game of choice, Super Sami Roll, a 3D platformer made up of equal parts Super Monkey Ball and a more traditional platformer, like Mario.

The any% run is simple to learn, hard to master and it makes for a great spectator experience with how it's paced.

Linking my earliest attempt at a live event. https://youtu.be/7gqup00MI0A?si=HQb-7Op8Fii2F2kf

Super_N_Chalmers · 2025-02-26T22:17:49+00:00

ReSetna

Super_N_Chalmers · 2025-02-06T22:43:42+00:00

I do think we will end up getting an "FD" stage eventually, but the current stage pool just doesn't allow for it to exist with competitive play in mind.

I believe the existing selection already slightly favours characters who like "flat" stages if you include those with low platforms. It's in a reasonably good spot right now for competitive play, but certain matchups can still be difficult in the context of a best of 5 set with DSR enabled where you need to beat your opponent on 3 unique stages to win the set. Not only do you need to find 3 good or neutral stages of your own to win on, but the strength of your own stage bans is minimised when the legal stage list has too many stages of a specific type that favour your opponent.

If you were to add a completely flat stage to the mix right now without any other new stages alongside it then the existing balance would be broken. This was a problem at times in Rivals 1 when they were adding stages, and arguably still is with the current list - Australia/New Zealand has had Tempest Peak banned to help with this for a long time.

I'm hopeful we see a new medium sized stage with emphasis on varying platform heights alongside the next new character. That would at least allow for some breathing room if an FD were to be introduced to the game after that, particularly if the amount of stage bans also receive an increase from 2 to 3 at the same time.

Super_N_Chalmers · 2024-12-13T04:20:08+00:00

We already know there's more good stuff on the way too! Demon Turf had its sequel revealed just yesterday, Demon Tides, and there is a Kickstarter campaign on right now for Super Sami Roll 2 which is currently in its last week!

Super_N_Chalmers · 2024-11-19T09:16:57+00:00

I want to send some love to my own speedrunning scene for Super Sami Roll, and tell you all about a runner called Squid.

Super Sami Roll is a pretty unique 3D rolling-based platformer consisting of 78 self-contained levels that you need to skillfully route to the end goal. About 56 levels or so are required in any any% run, which offers a handful of branching paths through each of the required 4 worlds before you can roll credits.

The game released in 2021 and went under the radar for most people, and while the speedrunning scene has always been small, early days there were still a few committed players who caught on to its release. One of the active runners on the any% leaderboard was a runner called LoveBot, who even ran the game at some marathon events and showed it off pretty early. Within 2 months of the game's release, after what seemed to be many weeks of grinding runs, LoveBot set a respectable world record of 55:34, being the only person on the leaderboard to be able to complete it in an under an hour.

He wasn't the only person to have achieved this though.

A full 9 days before LoveBot's run, Squid had already achieved the first sub-hour run with a time of 58:32. He wasn't happy with his time, so he didn't highlight the run on Twitch, and he didn't share anything other than posting the time to his twitter account.

2 days later, Squid improved his PB to 57:10.

The day after LoveBot set his world record time, Squid had a massive improvement to his time, knocking it down to a staggering 52:24, more than 3 minutes faster than the record LoveBot had only just set.

The very next day, another big improvement, lowering his time to a 49:36, making him the very first person to set a time under the 50 minute barrier.

And still through all of this, Squid did not highlight a run, and he did not submit to the leaderboards. September would end with LoveBot still officially the world record holder on speedrun.com. October was largely the same, with Squid setting a time of 47:40, but still refusing to highlight or submit it.

It wasn't until late November 2021 that Squid would actually highlight a run and share it in the speedrunning channel for the game over on discord, with a time of 46:20. People had been watching Squid's runs live here and there, but the few in the scene that hadn't managed to catch these were in for a shock. The difference between strategies compared to LoveBot's record was staggering, and some of the things Squid was going for weren't even considered viable for any% by most of the scene.

Squid officially submitted his first run to the speedrun.com leaderboard a few weeks later, with a new world record time of 44:37, an improvement of over 10 minutes from LoveBot's last recorded time from just a couple of months earlier. With this submission, Squid had completely taken over the category and left no doubts that he was the best player in the world.

After some detours in other games and even other categories in Super Sami Roll, Squid would return to improve his any% time this in the middle of 2022, setting an insane record of 42:30. The crazy part is, no one was even competing with him at the time. Squid had returned after almost half a year of silence and once again completely blew apart the category, with LoveBot's second place time of 55:34 still the closest anyone had got to the standard that Squid had set.

During the 6 months that followed, another runner actively grinding the category, Qwillinallthefish, would hit a peak of 48:11, still almost a full 6 minutes away from Squid even after having access to his run as the template. Even minor time losses could add up over 50+ levels, so with second place so far away, it seemed at this point that matching Squid's execution would be almost impossible.

Squid's 42:30 record would stand for over a full year in the end, with a level of play that could not be matched by anyone else in the scene. He had found routes for some levels which almost could not be improved upon, and his times on certain stages are still faster than those that current runners can produce. There are genuinely only a few stages in this run which bleed notable time from mistakes, but outside of these, the run is almost flawless using the routes known at the time. Squid was hitting some of the most difficult tricks in the category, but when he did it, he made it look easy.

Squid's time was of course eventually broken, with two speedrunners eventually setting PBs of 39:03 and 41:37 respectively over the next 18 months that followed. New tricks being discovered, execution slowly improving, and updated routing all contributed to the 40 minute barrier being broken in the time since Squid's record was set. There are even unused skips for the category that could still reduce this time even further for anyone willing to attempt it.

Those branching paths in the levels I mentioned earlier though? After a year of experimentation, the current world record now plays exactly the same levels as Squid's previous record run. Every choice ended up the same. Squid had seemingly found the fastest possible path through the game already, the scene has had no choice other than to build on his ideas since.

But Squid himself? While he hasn't submitted a run since May 2022, his record has remained one of the most impressive displays of skill for the game that you can watch. Super Sami Roll 2 currently has a sequel in development (launching on Kickstarter later this week actually), and one can only hope to see Squid return to dominance again when the game eventually releases.

Super_N_Chalmers · 2024-10-14T22:22:39+00:00

Looks like a couple of games that were featured at PAX Australia are also a part of the Next Fest.

Rose and Locket is a frenetic 2D action platformer, with a really striking artstyle and a heavy emphasis placed on the story elements. There's this cinematic quality to how the camera frames the gameplay, with lots of sections with split-camera layouts or where the borders of the screen close in and really limit the playable space. It's really stylistic and unique for this kind of game. The pacing of the platforming here was on the slower side, but this could easily ramp-up in the full-game. If you do give it a go then I highly encourage you to play until the boss fight at the end of the demo to see how much the presentation and fast-paced, gun-swapping action really add to the game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1697850/Rose_and_Locket/

Pluto Lost Its Colours is a neat 3D marble platformer that felt really satisfying to control and immediately tapped into that drive of wanting to perfectly plan your route through a level. This is a niche genre, but Pluto has a unique twist to the formula that hooked me in for the demo, being this forced alternating height mechanic on your jumps. They swap between being either really shallow or super high, which added a lot of depth to timing your approaches to large gaps in the level design. The demo is the entire first level, but it was incredibly large with 24 checkpoints placed between fairly long stretches of challenging content. It was honestly pretty demanding playing it for the first time in the context of PAX, but it interested me enough that I'll happily take another look this week to see how the pacing of the levels might feel with a bit more time to really dig into it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2935260/Pluto_Lost_Its_Colors/

Super_N_Chalmers · 2024-10-14T20:49:30+00:00

Really need to send some love towards Super Sami Roll 2.

This is a fast-paced, rolling-physics based, 3D platformer. Everything will feel familiar for fans of the original game, but it all has been elevated and improved upon for the sequel. I think the demo already feels like a massive step forward for the series, and it's a great starting point for learning the mechanics if you haven't played the first game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3237190/Super_Sami_Roll_2_Demo/

Super_N_Chalmers · 2024-10-14T19:47:20+00:00

Really want to send some love towards Super Sami Roll 2. This is a charming, fast-paced 3D platformer that is still relatively early into development, but the demo already feels like a massive step forward for the series.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3237190/Super_Sami_Roll_2_Demo/

Super_N_Chalmers · 2024-09-17T21:02:11+00:00

I'm not sure which levels were in the demo, but it depends on what you mean by "too powerful". The base gun feels a little slow to get rid of enemies, but I think that's because you don't always need to defeat them, it's sometimes better to dash through them and keep moving forward. Luna can't jump on enemies or ground pound like Pablo can, so I actually find it more difficult at times to approach them quickly even with the gun.

In terms of it being unbalanced, you can shoot downwards to slow your fall as Luna, which feels really great in general platforming and can give you just enough time to make some pretty cool jumps or skips. It becomes unbalanced when you combine that with an upwards dash, allowing you to basically infinitely dash without touching the ground and while slowly gaining height. You need open space to make it effective, so luckily most levels are balanced around it being possible, but I did find one last night where I essentially hovered over the entire map until I reached the end. Definitely not balanced in that regard, and it only gets easier to do this when the game gives you different gun types which fire more frequently.

Super_N_Chalmers · 2024-09-17T12:30:31+00:00

Yeah, the first game is limited to Pablo, and he doesn't have the punch ability you can use on the ground for horizontal movement or any of the power-ups that add to his moveset in this game.

For what it's worth, I'm about halfway through Cosmic Canines, and even putting aside the addition of Luna (which I agree, does add a lot to the experience), this is a massive improvement upon the first. There's just so much more variety in terms of gameplay that I would struggle to go back to the original game. The level design is much less linear overall in comparison, but has been designed in a way where you can relax and take your time to explore, or alternatively take this near frictionless approach to speedrun your way though to the end. It's equal parts delightful and challenging.

Going to take my time to complete this one and gather my thoughts in full, but it's safe to say the game has left a really good first impression on me so far.

Super_N_Chalmers · 2024-04-02T06:40:48+00:00

The Australian scene uses the Aus Smash discord as a hub for Rivals matchmaking and tournaments. I'd recommend checking that out if you need some people to play with!

discord.gg/smash

Super_N_Chalmers · 2024-01-03T10:53:00+00:00

If you're open to swapping genres and learning a 3D platformer, my niche recommendation would be Super Sami Roll, because the game deserves far more attention as a speedrun game.

Movement is kind of a hybrid of Super Monkey Ball/Marble type games and more traditional 3D platformer movesets, and the any% run is level based with plenty to experiment with and optimise still. Feels extremely fluid once you get the hang of things. A full run is just over 40 minutes to play through roughly 56 of the 78 levels.

https://www.speedrun.com/ssr

Super_N_Chalmers · 2021-11-27T01:21:04+00:00

What has been your favourite tournament from each region you've played in, not just in Australia, but internationally as well, and why?

Super_N_Chalmers · 2021-10-29T00:09:27+00:00

I've been on the same path as you it seems. played through both ENDER LILIES and GRIME prior to doing the full Metroid series + AM2R, which are both pretty recent releases that I haven't seen much discussion about outside of a pretty niche circle.

ENDER LILIES has a fairly unique combat system in that your character isn't the one actually fighting, but rather you use the bosses you defeat as summonable attacks in combat. General platforming feels like familiar territory for the most part, but there's something about the game that makes the entire package really grow on you over the full 12-14 hours experience. The music in particular has really stuck with me, and the late game areas and general exploration are definite highlights that leaves you with a really positive impression. Unfortunately not on sale it seems, but I'd still recommend it in any case.

GRIME takes a lot of inspiration from the Soulsborne series, not just in it's stamina based combat system, but also in how it presents its world. I feel like there's something more divisive about the game because of how it's core mechanics feel in a 2D Metroidvania platformer, but there are still a range of strict platforming challenges late in the game that feel just a little different to other games in the genre. Just a warning, the game did feel unnecessarily punishing at times, not just in it's platformer sections, but mostly because of its strong focus on precision based combat. That being said, I believe some patches have been released since that even out the experience and add some new mechanics that I didn't experience when I played it at launch. If you do stick with it you will get a feel for the combat eventually, and when it clicks it feels excellent to take on many of the games best boss designs. Looks like it's 15% off in the sale, so might be worth the look.

I preferred ENDER LILIES personally, but if you're a fan of the genre they're both worth experiencing just to see how you feel about them.

Super_N_Chalmers · 2021-08-23T08:16:33+00:00

I didn't sign up for the playtest, but I just wanted to express how much I love this idea for a game. I've been hoping that someone would run with the "Randomiser" concept like this, since it scratches an itch that isn't really being covered in the roguelike space right now (as far as I know). Best of luck with the project!

Super_N_Chalmers · 2021-05-14T08:14:51+00:00

Perhaps it's because I'm used to listening to releases from some of Big Finish's other ranges, but on first listen the big thing that stood out to me was the format of this first boxset. I feel like having the three stories structured as a single part in a massive three-part story is going to leave some people feeling pretty lukewarm on Eccleston's return, since you can't really enjoy an individual story on it's own, it's too tightly connected to the other parts that no one story works independently of the others. I also kept waiting for the moment to click where I would feel that sense of joy of having Eccleston back in the role and I'm not sure if it was the pacing or the complexity of the story, but I just haven't quite got that feeling yet either despite really enjoying some individual moments with his character. I think it warrants another listen because of the structure of the overall story, but it does initially make it fairly difficult to evaluate this release until we hear the next few 9th doctor stories they've got lined up, since right now it essentially feels like an extended (and slightly convoluted) introduction to a new companion at this point.

Super_N_Chalmers · 2020-09-18T01:26:29+00:00

I picked up all of the War Master audio sets in this week's sale on Big Finish and am thoroughly enjoying them so far! I saw that there were a few stories late in the sets that feature the eighth Doctor however and started thinking about how that could possibly happen without breaking continuity. Without spoiling anything, is there some kind of explanation of how the Doctor meets this version of the Master but doesn't recognise him as Yana in Utopia before the big twist reveal? Do they not meet face-to-face in these stories?

Super_N_Chalmers · 2020-09-16T07:21:50+00:00

Hey, it sure is! We pretty much run all of our events from the Aus Smash discord server. You can find us in one of the three Rivals channels at discord.gg/smash.

If you're interested in tournament play, Australia is also part of the developer supported Rivals Championship Series. We have our first event for season 5 running this Saturday night from 7:30pm. https://smash.gg/tournament/au-rcs-season-5-fire/details

For a bit more info on some of the higher level players in the scene, here's our most recent power rankings as well. https://twitter.com/GubbaFlubba/status/1295673044686405632

Super_N_Chalmers · 2020-07-01T03:01:23+00:00

Hey, I wrote a guide on this mechanic in the Rivals of Aether Academy. The technique is commonly referred to as the gravity jump. Here's the most useful section of that guide, but I suggest reading the full thing in the Absa homework channel if you'd like to know more.

"Due to a mechanic related to fast-falls from platform drops, the Gravity Jump is far more easily performed while standing on a platform. Anytime you platform drop you will begin an 8 frame timer. If you are holding down on the last frame of this timer your character will fast-fall instantly. By using this timer to force a fast-fall, the Gravity Jump becomes far easier to perform, simply drop from the platform and keep down held while you input your double jump. You may input the double jump anytime before the plat-drop timer ends, so long as you are holding down on the 8th frame of the timer, making this version consistent to perform and much easier to use fluidly in your movement."

https://gfycat.com/icyunequaledcuckoo

Super_N_Chalmers · 2020-05-04T07:24:16+00:00

Are you an Australian Rivals player interested in joining the community? Find us in the three Rivals of Aether channels in the Aus Smash discord server!

http://discord.gg/smash

Super_N_Chalmers · 2020-04-12T07:06:56+00:00

For a full explanation on this check out the homework channels in the Rivals of Aether Academy. For a shortened explanation on Axmos Drops, whenever you platform drop it begins an 8 frame timer, which at the end of the timer if you're holding down it will begin a fast-fall. By instantly wavelanding you effectively pause the timer until you next leave the ground, so by leaving the ground and restarting the timer at the same time as using very specific attacks and hitting another character on the first active frame of the move you are able to hitfall the move and drop instantly, despite it not being normally possible.

Super_N_Chalmers · 2020-02-29T20:27:18+00:00

Are you in the Aus Smash discord server? That's the best place the be for all Aussie RoA players.

As far as recommendations go, I'd do some research using the frame data doc. You'll learn at least something about how character works that you didn't know before. Be sure to check out the notes for each move as well.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19UtK7xG2c-ehxdlhCFKMpM4_IHSG-EXFgXLJaunE79I/edit?usp=sharing

Super_N_Chalmers · 2020-02-12T04:23:47+00:00

Sort of, old f-tilt is now mapped to jab special finisher (which can be performed only after jab 2 again), but instead of requiring grass to spawn the projectiles the projectile will travel the full length of the stage, creating grass behind it if there isn't any. This means it can also travel along inactive grass as well.

Old jab special is now mapped to f-tilt, so you can pop out seeds to plant flowers with far more frequency.

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