While many streamers across Twitch and YouTube are still playing through big new releases like Diablo 4 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a number have now moved on to slightly more obscure pastures.
After all, while reaching level 100 with your build of choice or defeating Ganondorf without using any weapons are both difficult, the kinds of people who’ve beaten Elden Ring using Bop-Its, dance pads, and their minds are always searching for new ways to challenge and frustrate themselves.
The latest game taking the streaming world by storm and driving the rage levels of its residents through the roof is Only Up, a recently released climbing game which some speedrunners have already found a way to beat in under a minute.
Have you managed to beat Twitch’s latest obsession yet?
While you’ve likely seen the game, which is the work of indie studio SCKR Games and challenges players to climb as far up a Jack and the Beanstalk-inspired mountain of stuff, being played by larger creators like Ludwig and xQc, it’s also been picked up by dedicated community of speedrunners.
Thanks to a handy glitch, a couple of these speedy individuals have already managed to complete any% runs through the game which clock in at just over 30 seconds, with the current world record as of writing being a 33 second run by Call of Duty streamer Shade, which you can watch below.
As you can see, Shade’s blistering time is thanks to an exploit based around rolling in specific spot, which allows the player to launch themselves upwards at significant velocity and land directly on the platform that marks the end of a climb, therefore circumventing all of the tricky platforming usually required to get up there.
Meanwhile, the current world record for a run that doesn’t use this glitch, completed by veteran speedrunner Distortion2, sits at 19 minutes and 42 seconds and involves some incredibly impressive jumping, bouncing and flying through the air.
As happened with the similarly frustrating Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, which also captured the curiosity of streamers by forcing them to climb upwards in a manner likely to manufacture entertaining reactions, odds are plenty more people are going to endure aggravating ascents in order to try and break these records before the next craze arrives.
Regardless of how many times you’ve ended up falling to the ground in Only Up so far, stay tuned for more coverage of some interesting streamers and guides to the game.