The forums have me worried: is this an actual game or some self-referencial meme?

[Mister Magician]

A lot of these "throwback" games are so steeped in the "speedrun" echo chambers that they play on purpose like how speedrunners break old games. In other words what were glitches in the original game that gamers found years later are the "community's preferred way to play."

I'm seeing people on the forum saying that the game's strict completing times are dealt with by "look at the floor and run to the exit" like speedrunners use to break goldeneye's ai into not attacking because the camera isn't looking at them. As in that's how it's meant to be played on purpose, not as a glitch to be exploited.

Like how Ocarina of Time speedruns don't even play the game or use items anymore, just hit world geometry at hyper-specific angles until the engine glitches out and teleports you to the last boss room just before the credits.

Now imagine a "throwback adventure game" that had no weapons or progression or even a world to explore, and it was just a dark room with weirdly shaped polygons you run into until the credits unexplainably start rolling, and people in the "community" bubble called it "the next ocarina of time!" while everyone else looks at it and thinks "what the hell is this?"

Even something like shovel knight devolved into chained pixel perfect jumps over bottomless pits by the end, because that's key "speedrun tech" for megaman or castlevania.

So is this game just a "look at the floor and run to the exit" game; as in a shooter without any actual shooting, because it's self-referential to the existing "goldeneye community?" Or is this something that is closer to the classic game it's attempting to "reference" and not the argle-bargle of the modern "community" surrounding the game now?

[FISH]

You can play this game while taking your time or speedrun it just as you can with Goldeneye. There is no wrong way to enjoy it.

Something more could actually be done though if you really analyze it. Scoring could be introduced with remaining time on a clock adding to score and points added for headshots, body shots, kill multipliers, etc, etc. The game isn't going to go that route though as it's merely a simple homage to Rare's 1997 game. A homage we never recieved over the past 30 years. People will just enjoy it simply for that. I wouldn't think too deeply into it.

[MechBFP]

People say alot of stupid stuff on the Steam forums. You’ll get used to it.