“Some stages… can be skipped… you’re saying?”
At the message from “WokeUpSilverHaired” in the chat, Rydel was a little surprised but soon had a bewildered expression.
「Aren’t they talking about shortcuts?」
「Wait, you can skip stages with those?」
「I don’t think shortcuts work here.」
Shortcuts.
A style of play where you leave the intended course and take a quicker route.
It’s a kind of glitch play that takes advantage of the game’s imperfect physics engine.
In small indie games like Chain Roller, this kind of thing happens quite often.
It’s a technique mainly used by players aiming for speedruns.
“Chain Roller has shortcuts like that?”
But unlike other games, shortcutting in Chain Roller was difficult.
Because the map and stages are randomly generated.
Even though AI generates the map layout, the obstacles themselves aren’t newly created by AI.
The obstacles are always the ones the developer originally designed.
It just shuffles their order and type each time you start a new game.
The reason the stages feel fresh every time is simply because there are so many obstacle types.
The first “Dodge the Iron Ball” stage Rydel cleared was the same one other players had done.
But the map’s layout changes a little every time you start a new playthrough.
For a shortcut, you’d usually have to know the precise gaps or quirks of the stage in advance — but since those tiny details change every time, exploiting shortcuts becomes impossible.
Even if one player discovered a shortcut spot, the moment a new room is created, that subtle position would shift again.
It’s almost as if the AI shuffling the map layout was designed specifically to prevent shortcutting.
「There’s no way there are shortcuts in Chain Roller.」
「Stage skipping is structurally impossible.」
「Even if you luck out with a shortcut, skipping whole stages is impossible.」
「That gap’s way too high.」
Rydel sighed internally as she glanced at the chat window.
She looked up.
In this game, the higher you go, the more advanced the stages become.
The next stage was far above him.
It was too far.
No matter how much speed she built up, there was no way she could reach that height.
Unless she used some kind of cheat, skipping stages seemed completely impossible.
[WokeUpSilverHaired: Get back into position.]
[WokeUpSilverHaired: Just like last time.]
Seeing the somewhat relaxed message from WokeUpSilverHaired, Rydel adjusted her position again.
[WokeUpSilverHaired: Move forward just a little.]
[WokeUpSilverHaired: Tap the keyboard once!]
As before, WokeUpSilverHaired carefully adjusted the positions of Rydel and Delboong No.3.
[WokeUpSilverHaired: You did great last time.]
[WokeUpSilverHaired: Let’s keep it up.]
[WokeUpSilverHaired: 3]
[WokeUpSilverHaired: 2]
[WokeUpSilverHaired: 1GGGGGGGG]
“Hah!”
With a slightly softer battle cry than before, Rydel dashed forward on WokeUpSilverHaired’s signal.
The character picked up speed.
WhooshThey entered the anti-gravity zone.
Same as before.
All three bald-headed characters floated into the air.
At the same time, arrows came flying from the side.
“Ah!”
Rydel let out an involuntary gasp.
The memory of all three of them getting skewered by arrows and slammed into the wall just a second earlier flashed through her mind.
But unlike last time, where they had the luck to hit the wall and stop —”If I get hit now, I’m definitely falling all the way back to Stage 1!”
An arrow shot toward him from the right.
On the left side, there was no wall this time — just an open void.
If she got hit now, there was a 100% chance she’d plummet straight down.
Whoosh!
At that moment, her character suddenly dropped downward.
It was the timing where anti-gravity weakened.
Thanks to that, her character fell just enough for the arrow to skim right over the top of her shiny bald head.
[LOOOOL]
「Ohhhhhh」
「That arrow just barely missed him LOL」
“N-Nice!”
Rydel wiped the sweat from her forehead.
Sweat trickled down her forehead.
It had been a while since Rydel had felt this tense while playing a game — and that was despite the fact that there wasn’t even anything to control while floating in midair.
Whish—!
Whish—!
Arrows kept flying toward them in rapid succession.
But thanks to WokeUpSilverHaired’s incredible timing, every single arrow narrowly missed their characters.
Maybe it was because they were running at full acceleration, but the anti-gravity section that had seemed so long earlier now felt surprisingly short.
‘If we just keep going like this…’
The end was in sight.
The end of the anti-gravity section was just ahead.
If they kept up this pace, clearing the stage wasn’t far off.
‘Did they really predict all of this?’
Rydel had doubted it at first when they got hit by an arrow and slammed into the wall.
But WokeUpSilverHaired had truly found the way to clear this section on just the second attempt.
‘But what did they mean by skipping stages?’
Was that just something they said without thinking?
As Rydel tilted her head in confusion.
Thwack!
“Ah!”
An arrow hit Rydel’s character squarely.
The bald-headed character that had been flying so smoothly was suddenly flung out of bounds.
“Nooooo! We’re doomed!”
Had WokeUpSilverHaired’s calculations been off?
At this rate, she was going to fall.
Clang!
But then, with the sound of a chain tightening, Rydel’s character was yanked back inside.
“Huh? What just happened?”
Rydel looked completely bewildered.
They were floating in midair, unable to control their movement at all.
If she got hit by an arrow, the whole team should’ve been dragged down like a string of fish.
But for some reason, her character had stopped in place midair.
「Delboong3 also got hit.」
「Looks like they got hit at the exact same time?」
「Delboong, noooo」
「Delboong saved Delboong.」
“Oh…”
Rydel finally noticed the chain stretched tight between them.
The arrows had been flying in from both sides.
At the exact moment Rydel got hit, Delboong3 had been hit by an arrow from the opposite direction.
Since they were flung in opposite directions, the physics engine balanced them out and left them hanging perfectly still in midair.
“Phew… That was way too close. But now… our speed’s gone…”
It was a relief that they hadn’t been flung out of the stage.
But because they’d been hit from both sides, their forward momentum had almost completely disappeared.
They were so close to the end, but at this speed, getting hit by another arrow and falling seemed inevitable.
「Looks like they won’t get hit, though?」
「That timing is insane.」
Even though their speed had dropped significantly, the arrows continued to narrowly miss all three of their characters.
But there was one problem — the end of the anti-gravity section.
「That part doesn’t seem to have anti-gravity?」
「It’s a gravity on-and-off zone.」
「Looks like it’s off right now.」
True to its position as the final stretch of the stage, this section was different from the others.
The earlier sections only had varying levels of weak or strong anti-gravity.
But the end section had an on-off system.
At times, there was no anti-gravity at all — and then suddenly, a powerful anti-gravity field would activate out of nowhere.
It was no wonder this stage was so difficult.
Even if you made it all the way to the end, mistiming that last section could send you crashing to the ground — or flinging you so high that you veered off course entirely.
“We probably need to enter right when the anti-gravity is fading, huh?”
Rydel’s eyes gleamed.
Sure, WokeUpSilverHaired had been treating him like dead weight throughout this run.
But she was a streamer who had cleared countless “bad games” before.
She figured out the right answer immediately.
Even with the on-off system, there was always a brief moment between the anti-gravity turning on and off where a perfect balance occurred.
That’s the moment they had to hit to land safely.
「But how do you even time that?」
「Easier said than done, lol.」
「Once you start floating, you can’t adjust your timing anymore.」
Trying to catch that perfect entry timing felt like being a pilot trying to land a plane in severe turbulence.
And there was no way to stop midway.
They had to calculate this timing from the very start.
Rydel let out a heavy sigh.
Rydel sighed.
At this point, it really felt like this stage had been designed just so players wouldn’t clear it.
‘But… this doesn’t seem like the right timing.’
Right now, the anti-gravity was OFF.
Because of that, all the arrows that had been flying from every direction were now embedded in the ground — a ridiculous amount of them.
If the anti-gravity strengthened from here, all those arrows were going to shoot back up.
Like a volcanic eruption.
When that happened, they wouldn’t just have to deal with the anti-gravity — they’d be hit by the impact of all those arrows too, getting flung with even greater force.
“W-Wait a second… don’t tell me…”
As the three characters, having lost most of their speed, slowly approached the final section.
The arrows buried in the ground all began to rise at once.
That powerful anti-gravity unique to the last section had activated.
The arrows, now accelerated, shot upward at terrifying speed.
Heading straight toward Rydel, SilverHairWokeUp, and Delboong3, all floating helplessly.
[SilverHairWokeUp: Hold on tight.]
As if they had been ready for this all along, SilverHairWokeUp’s message appeared in chat.
Whizz!
Whizz!
Whizz!
“Aaaaahhh!!”
Countless arrows struck their characters’ bald bodies.
Not just Rydel — but the other two as well.
And at that very moment —The three characters shot upward like rockets.[SilverHairWokeUp: I wasn’t sure what would happen if we got hit by the arrows, so I tried getting hit once.]
[SilverHairWokeUp: Turns out the hit detection on the arrows…]
[SilverHairWokeUp: …launches you even if you just graze them.]
[SilverHairWokeUp: So I figured if we got hit by a lot of them, we’d probably get launched way up.]
[SilverHairWokeUp: And… it actually worked LOL]
[SilverHairWokeUp: It worked!]