Jailor’s Island disappears beneath a blue horizon. Throughout the month of September, the SHIRO! community pursued the monster Bilan through treacherous castles overflowing with nerve-wracking obstacles and across parallel realities — but instead of bounties and fortune, we found glimpses of personal discovery.
This edition of the bimonthly community challenges hosted by SHIRO! was framed as a video game “book club” with the hopes that the white-knuckle gameplay would be paired with reflection and discussion. This goal was realized. Over the course of September, nine participants beat Dark Savior, with six completing each of the five branching parallels. Many more SHIRO! community members cheered on the action, sharing their memories of the game, advice, and more.
As for the competition side of the challenge, the race for lowest total time — Fastest Savior — was tightly controlled by privateye with a time of 8:15 for the middle stretch of the month… that was until Redninja passed him on the 22nd of September with a 7:33. Redninja would drop their time to an impressive 5:29 by the close of the month. The challenge very nearly witnessed a last-minute clapback from privateye, who had managed to achieve a staggeringly low total time of 3:49, but September ended before his submissions were officially made.
TheNotoriousVDP achieved quite the comeback over the course of the challenge, finishing the five parallels with an initial total time of 41:02 on Sept. 25 — the result of having accidentally left their Saturn on overnight during a Parallel I playthrough. Unhappy with this result, TheNotoriousVDP chose to repeat Parallels I through IV over the following three days, lowering their time to 7:23 and securing a second-place finish in the Fastest Savior category.
Ultimately, privateye led in the individual Speedrun categories, with the lowest times on Parallels III, IV, and tying with TheNotoriousVDP for the top spot in Parallel V. Redninja managed the lowest times on Parallels I and II.
SPEEDRUN:
- A Hunt for the Evil — Fastest completion time for Parallel I:
- Redninja
- A Hunt for the Heart — Fastest completion time for Parallel II:
- Redninja
- A Hunt for the Lies — Fastest completion time for Parallel III:
- privateye
- A Hunt for the Truth — Fastest completion time for Parallel IV:
- privateye
- Marathon of Death — Fastest completion time for Parallel V:
- TheNotoriousVDP, privateye
- Fastest Savior — Lowest combined completion time all Parallels:
- Redninja
September saw the return of Community Award categories, mystery prizes revealed on Oct. 1 — with the exception of Bounty Hunter — that sought to reward participation. The Community Awards were as follows:
- Bounty Hunters — Complete all Parallels:
- Redninja, TheNotoriousVDP, privateye, Rasputin3000, WorldlyBoar, Double Dime
- First Screenshot — For the first participant to post a screenshot of their playthrough:
- gabriel
- Took More than 4 Minutes — For the last participant to post an initial response to the Week 1 conversation prompts:
- Redninja
- Videographer — For the participant who posted the most video content from their playthrough:
- tailsofsaturn
- Parallel VI — For the final participant post before the challenge deadline:
- Mampfus
- Show and Tell — For the participant who posts the most screenshots from their playthrough:
- TheNotoriousVDP
Notably, six recipients of community awards did not win in a Speedrun category, truly realizing the spirit of the awards.
All prize winners will be receiving bespoke magnets. Redninja also will be awarded a one-off T-shirt for winning the Fastest Savior category. A non-winner version of the T-shirt is available for anyone to buy at the SHIRO! Teepublic store. All prizes for this challenge were designed by SaturnDave and made by Xiden.
Thank you to all who participated!
And not a single mention of Drizzit! Shame! lol