Call the neighbor kids…

Call the neighbor kids with trash can lids and buckets on their heads, cuz I’m telling you, we’re gonna need a little help tonight

What’s happening! It’s great to see you! Thank you for checking in. Let’s get you caught up.

To recap, the last time we checked in, I had just finished preparing for 100% attempts of Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Two days ago, the feat was accomplished. I couldn’t be prouder to have pulled this off. You can check out the full run here (the run starts around the 3 minute mark).

The run was verified yesterday. Similar to my journey in Ninja Turtles, I am again in the #2 spot.

I am less than one minute from the world record, but - again, similar to Ninja Turtles - I am happy to leave this project here. I have had a great ride with Zamn. It truly brought me back to my high school days. I will always love this game, and I can rest a little easier knowing that I’ve saved all the neighbors at least once in my life.

I was also trending on the speedrun subreddit - I was the #2 post at one point! How cool!

This grind was certainly more compact than Turtles. Ninja Turtles was my first grind that truly prioritized speed, achievement and results above all else. That was a process. I built new practices, new habits. I rediscovered a competitive spirit, long-diminished after burning out from years of competitive, toxic business environments. I took a break from game development, and put my all into just one pursuit. Looking at the log of personal best times I submitted to the leaderboards shows the time lapse:

Zombies was different. For one, I was able to jump into it with all my good habits and practices already firing on all cylinders. The best markers of my Zombies time are probably these two screenshots, which I posted to the speedrunning discord for ZAMN.

Another contributor to the condensed grind timeline is the nature of the game and category I was playing. Longtime readers of this blog might remember that after my Ninja Turtles experience, I had a few requirements for the next project I was going to pick that I didn’t have going into Ninja Turtles. Chief among them was the nature of the speedrunning community that surrounded the game. The Ninja Turtles world record isn’t even viewable, and I would describe my interactions with world record holder as adversarial and competitive in nature. Not really my vibe.

This led to me prescreening the communities and world record holders present in the games and categories I wanted for my next project. The ZAMN community at large was definitely cool, but a special shoutout is needed for PensivePineapple, the world record holder for 100%. They were not only extremely helpful with questions I had, they even popped into my stream during attempts and offered unsolicited tips that helped immensely.

Well, now that ZAMN is over, I have a few more things that I now know I need to put way more thought into prior to selecting a game. One day into running ZAMN (which keep in mind is after several weeks of learning the game offline), a lot of things hit me. The biggest one was, the amount of randomness in this run was much, much higher than what I had acclimated to by playing so much Ninja Turtles.

My mindset after one day of streaming ZAMN was something along the lines of the following. “Wow, ZAMN is really random. Unlike Ninja Turtles, this is going to be a lot less about skill and a lot more about patience and luck. Do I want to sit here and wait for the coinflips to come up my way? Is this the sort of project I want to dedicate my limited time to?”

Looking back on that thought process that had me feeling very down after one day of ZAMN streaming, I think there’s a few lessons to learn. The first has to do with black-and-white notions of randomness. Just because the result of something is random, that doesn’t mean you cannot influence it. Completing a 100% run of ZAMN does indeed require some things to go your way. But, the more I played, the more consistently I would get deeper into the game without losing a neighbor. One by one, I would add in strategies that tilted the odds a little more in my favor. Day by day, the run felt less like frustrating blind luck, and more like reading tarot cards - yes, sometimes the line between strategy and superstition were blurred, but you couldn’t help but feel like you stumbled on some new truth each run.

Watching your success metrics was a lesson with ZAMN as well. I showed you that really satisfying progressive improvement of my personal best Ninja Turtles times above. I only completed one ZAMN run, and now I am in second place. A mantra I kept repeating as I spent hours practicing levels I had never even seen in a live run was - when opportunity knocks, it is too late to prepare. Each project needs its own way to keep you feeling satisfied with progress. ZAMN forced me to shift away from relying on traditional PBs for motivation. ZAMN was more about making sure you were ready once you got on that one magical run.

Writing this only two days removed from getting my Zombies run, I also have to say that completing a project is a really special feeling. I watched back my run, and I could feel my brain still in competition mode. I would watch - it’s level 22B. The Robbie in the video has the bazooka equipped and is about to press B four times to cycle to the weapon four slots forward. Just two levels prior, in level 21, pressing B four times with the bazooka selected would equip you with the holy cross. One level prior, in 22, pressing B four times with the bazooka equipped would equip you with the lawn mower. But, in level 21 you pick up the bubble gun, and that enters the rotation prior to the bazooka. In level 22, you pick up the flame thrower, and that enters the rotation after the bazooka. Video Robbie is on top of it. She is locked in and clicks four times to go from the bazooka to the bubble gun. Right as she’s about to do it I urgently think, “FOUR!”. Then, I remember. It’s over. I relax and watch video Robbie smoothly finish the level. The process of forgetting the run has officially started, and I’m enjoying it.

It’s the exact same feeling I used to have when I switched jobs. It’s the realization that the Tuesday 11am-noon meeting that was a living, breathing thing for months or even years just doesn’t exist anymore. It is nice to have an opportunity to let go and move forward.

Thank you Zombies Ate My Neighbors. You will always hold a special place in my heart.

Here’s my updated resume - we’ll check in again once the new project is underway.

Have an amazing day! Talk to you soon <3