⏱️ Speedrun & Score Guide

Scarlet Skips has no built-in timer or leaderboard — the speedrun scene organizes itself around two goals: milestone racing (reaching a height ending as fast as possible) and score chasing (maximizing points in a single run). Both play to the same one-button core: flawless rhythm, no wasted jumps, and a build plan decided before the run starts.

Endings trigger automatically at height milestones. The 100m tutorial ending is designed to be reachable in about a minute of play, and Sky Reacher at 500m takes roughly 2-3 minutes of consistent jumping. From 1000m upward, upgrade picks matter more than raw speed — the reference point for Cloud Walker is a solid build of 3-4 upgrades.

For score runs, the upgrade order is the run. Early (0-500m), prioritize Extra Ropes and Jump Height Boost. Mid-run (500-2000m), add Fire Ropes and Score Multiplier. Late (2000m+), take Golden Rope if it appears, plus Reinforce Jumprope to survive the tight timing. Billion-point runs need everything to align — and 30+ minutes of near-perfect rhythm.

Time jumps by ear rather than sight: the rope's sound as it approaches the ground is more consistent than the animation. Many top players use a metronome or music with a steady BPM to hold rhythm through long runs. Keep your grip and breathing relaxed — tension kills rhythm.

Speedrun.com is the home of Scarlet Skips speedrun competition — the leaderboards, rules and community all live there. The site tracks two main categories. "Any% / 100m" (First Hundred ending) is the shortest official route, used as an entry-level race. "1000m / Cloud Walker" is the de facto main category because it is long enough to test build skill but short enough to retry in one sitting. All categories require the unmodified Steam build, in-game timer or LiveSplit with auto-splitter, and a visible run video — screen capture from OBS with the game audio is enough. Glitches that skip height milestones are banned, the same ruleset the leaderboard has used since the game launched.

LiveSplit is the Scarlet Skips runner's timer of choice. The game does not ship with a built-in speedrun timer, so every serious runner uses LiveSplit with the Scarlet Skips auto-splitter. Install the auto-splitter from the LiveSplit splits repository — it detects each ending milestone (100m, 500m, 1000m, 2000m, 5000m, 10000m) and splits automatically so you can compare against your PB segment by segment. Bind the reset hotkey to a side mouse button to avoid accidental resets during a charge. For score runs, keep a second split page with only the 1000m and 5000m bookmarks so your focus stays on rhythm, not the HUD.

World records (WR) in Scarlet Skips are tracked by the community on speedrun.com — that page is the home of every official WR, from the Any% (100m) world record to the 1000m WR and the Infinity (10000m) WR. The same page also hosts the Discord invite, route-sharing threads, and the weekly "sub-3 at 500m" challenge. The current Any% (100m) world record hovers around the 45-second mark, and the 1000m WR is in the low 5-minute range; both move roughly once a month as runners refine builds. If you are chasing a WR or just new to speedrunning Scarlet Skips, start by racing the ghosts on the community replay board — they are free, sorted by ending, and a better learning tool than trying to match the WR from day one.

The three pages speedrunners pair with this guide:

• →High Score Guide — the score-chasing build order
• →Controls & Timing — input fundamentals and rhythm by ear
• →All Endings — the height chart used as speedrun checkpoints