DARQ Speedrun Guide: Any% Routes, Puzzle Skips & Movement Tech

Movement Tech — DARQ's Hidden Speed

DARQ isn't built for speed. The game's puzzles are designed to be solved methodically, and the movement is deliberately slow to build tension. But speedrunners have found ways to push the engine to its limits.

Wall Jump Cancel

This is the most important technique in DARQ speedrunning. Jump against a wall and immediately turn your camera 180 degrees. If you time it right, you'll clip through certain collision boxes. This works best on corners and edges where two wall surfaces meet. The Chapter 2 skip relies entirely on this technique — you can bypass the entire second puzzle room by wall jump canceling through a specific corner near the entrance.

The timing is tight. You need to turn your camera within 4 frames of hitting the wall. Practice it in the first room of Chapter 1, where there's a corner that's forgiving enough to learn the timing.

Gravity Flip Skip

In chapters with gravity mechanics (Chapters 6 and 7), flipping at the right angle lets you skip entire puzzle sections. The trick is to flip gravity while you're in mid-air, near a wall. The game calculates your new position based on your current momentum and the new gravity direction. If you flip at the right angle, you'll be launched in a direction that bypasses the intended path.

This is most useful in Chapter 6, where a well-timed gravity flip can skip the entire rotating room puzzle. The skip saves about 90 seconds.

Dream Skip

Some dream sequences can be skipped by interacting with the exit before the dream fully loads. When you enter a dream sequence, there's a brief loading period where the game is still setting up the scene. If you spam the interact key during this loading period, you can sometimes trigger the exit interaction before the dream's logic is active.

This works on exactly two dream sequences in the game: the one in Chapter 3 and the one in Chapter 5. Both skips save about 30 seconds each.

Any% Route — Current Meta (WR: 18:30)

The current world record for DARQ Any% is 18 minutes and 30 seconds, held by a runner named NightOwl. The route has been refined over dozens of patches, and the current meta is about as optimized as it gets without major new discoveries.

Chapter 1 (0:00 – 2:00)

Straightforward. Solve the first puzzle quickly — the solution is always the same: pull the lever, grab the key, unlock the door. No skips here, but you can save a few seconds by not examining objects. Don't read any notes, don't look at any paintings. Just move.

Chapter 2 (2:00 – 4:30)

This is where the first major skip happens. Use the wall jump cancel at the corner near the entrance to clip through the wall. You'll land in the hallway past the second puzzle room. From there, it's a straight run to the exit. This skip saves about 2 minutes.

Chapter 3 (4:30 – 7:00)

The maze section. Most of the time here is spent navigating the maze, but there's a shortcut: hug the left wall at the start and take the third right turn. This puts you at the maze exit in about 45 seconds instead of the usual 2 minutes. The shadow monster chase sequence at the end can be skipped with the Dream Skip technique.

Chapter 4 (7:00 – 9:30)

The hospital chapter. The main time save here is knowing the exact order of room visits. Don't explore — go straight to the room with the key, then straight to the exit. There's a wall jump cancel skip near the morgue that bypasses a locked door, saving about 45 seconds.

Chapter 5 (9:30 – 12:00)

The theater chapter. This is the most linear chapter, so there aren't many skips. The Dream Skip works here, saving about 30 seconds. The rest is just clean execution.

Chapter 6 (12:00 – 15:00)

The gravity chapter. Use the Gravity Flip Skip to bypass the rotating room puzzle. The boss fight at the end can be ended in 2 cycles instead of 4 by using the gravity flip at the right moment. Wait for the boss to start its charge attack, flip gravity, and the boss will crash into the ceiling, taking double damage.

Chapter 7 (15:00 – 18:30)

The void chapter. This is the hardest chapter to speedrun because the gravity puzzles are unpredictable. The key is to memorize the exact sequence of gravity flips needed to reach the exit. There's no shortcut — you just have to execute perfectly.

All Chapters Route — Including DLC (WR: 35:00)

The All Chapters category includes the base game plus all DLC chapters. The current world record is 35 minutes. The DLC chapters are longer and have fewer skips, so clean execution is essential.

The DLC adds three new chapters that are more puzzle-heavy than the base game. The skips that work in the base game don't work in the DLC — the developers patched the most obvious exploits. You'll need to solve the DLC puzzles legitimately, which adds about 15 minutes to the run.

The routing strategy is different for All Chapters. You can't just rush through the base game — you need to conserve your mental energy for the DLC puzzles. Take an extra 30 seconds per base game chapter if it means you enter the DLC fresh.

Useful Skips — Complete List

• Door Clip (Easy): Sprint into certain doors at a 45-degree angle. If the door is thin enough, you'll clip through. Works on about 30% of doors in the game.
• Puzzle Skip (Medium): Some puzzles have alternate solutions that are faster than the intended path. For example, the Chapter 4 safe puzzle can be solved by guessing the combination (it's always 4-7-2).
• Cutscene Skip (Easy): Press Escape during cutscenes to skip them. This works on all cutscenes except the final one.
• Item Duplication (Hard): In Chapter 6, you can duplicate key items by interacting with them during a gravity flip. This is a frame-perfect exploit that's extremely difficult to pull off.