Advanced Techniques: Speedrunning Super Ninja Adventure

There's a point in Super Ninja Adventure where you stop dying and start noticing things. The way the jump arc peaks just before a platform. The half-second window after an enemy attacks where they're completely vulnerable. The way a particular wall jump, if you angle it exactly right, launches you over an entire section. That's when the speedrunning mindset kicks in — and once it does, you see the game completely differently.

I've been tearing through this game trying to optimize my runs, and I want to share everything I've figured out. This is for players who have already beaten the game or are comfortable with the core mechanics. If you're newer to the game, check out our Beginner's Guide first — this content assumes you're already fluent in the basics.

What Speedrunning Super Ninja Adventure Actually Means

First, a quick framing point: "speedrunning" in the context of Super Ninja Adventure doesn't have to mean competing against others or timing yourself to the millisecond. What I mean by it here is playing with efficiency as the primary goal — minimizing unnecessary actions, taking the fastest route through each level, and learning to read situations quickly enough to make split-second decisions without second-guessing.

Even if you never care about finishing the game in record time, thinking like a speedrunner makes you a dramatically better player. You'll develop tighter movement, better enemy reads, and a much stronger understanding of the game's systems.

The Slide-Jump: Your Most Important Advanced Tool

This one took me a long time to figure out, and I wish someone had told me about it earlier. When you're running at full speed and you jump, your horizontal momentum carries into the jump — you cover noticeably more horizontal distance than a standing jump. That's basic momentum physics and most players figure it out early.

What fewer people notice is that you can extend this further with what I call a slide-jump: crouch briefly while running (tap down without stopping horizontal input), then jump immediately out of the crouch. Done correctly, this creates a very low, very fast trajectory that covers extreme horizontal distance while keeping your hitbox low enough to pass under some obstacles.

The input timing is tight: down-input for roughly one frame, then immediately jump. You'll know you've got it when your character seems to launch forward rather than up. This technique is most valuable in the mid-game sections with wide gaps and low ceilings — sections that feel impossible with standard jumping become almost trivial once you have the slide-jump dialed in.

Chained Wall Jumps for Vertical Sections

You already know how to wall jump. The advanced version is chaining them with minimal height loss between each kick-off. Most players who know wall jumping use it reactively — they hit a wall and then remember to kick off. Speedrunners use it proactively — they aim at walls with the explicit intention of using them as launching pads.

The key difference is timing. In a reactive wall jump, you hit the wall, slide a bit, then jump. In a proactive one, you kick off the moment you touch the wall, before any sliding happens. This preserves your upward momentum from the original jump and effectively lets you climb vertical surfaces faster.

To practice: find a vertical shaft with walls on both sides. Start at the bottom and see how high you can get before your chain breaks down. Focus on eliminating the slide delay. When you can reach the top of a tall shaft in three or four bounces without losing momentum, you've got it.

In actual level runs, look for these applications:

• Vertical shafts that appear to require climbing — chained wall jumps let you fly through them
• Single tall walls that border a big platform — one well-timed wall jump can get you directly on top, skipping the intended ground route around
• Enemy-heavy sections with a wall on one side — wall jumping over enemies entirely is almost always faster than fighting through them

Enemy Skip Strategies

In casual play, fighting enemies is part of the experience. In efficient play, most enemies are obstacles to route around rather than engage. Here's how I approach different enemy types when I want to skip them:

Patrol enemies: Jump over them. Seriously, just jump over them. Your jump arc clears their hitbox reliably as long as you don't jump from too close. The trick is not hesitating — commit to the jump early enough that you're already past their aggro range when you land.

Projectile enemies: Time your approach to arrive at the enemy immediately after they've thrown. This gives you the full reload window to get past them. If you're moving fast enough, you can often dash past before they even register you as a target.

Jumping enemies: These are the hardest to skip because their movement is less predictable. The best strategy I've found is to pause at medium range and bait their jump, then sprint through while they're in the air and unable to redirect. Their landing spot is almost always behind where you'll be if you time the sprint correctly.

Groups of enemies: When you see multiple enemies clustered together, look for a high route. There's almost always a platform above grouped enemies that lets you bypass the entire encounter. If there isn't, a fully committed running jump through the group, using your slash to clear anything that's exactly in your path, is usually faster than stopping to fight each one.

Optimizing the Slash as a Movement Tool

Here's something that isn't obvious at all: the slash attack has a very slight forward momentum component. It's subtle, but when you slash in midair while moving, you travel fractionally further than you would without the slash. More importantly, the slash animation briefly extends your reach forward — if you're aiming for a platform and you're not quite going to make it, a slash at the peak of your jump can provide just enough extra horizontal extension to land.

This isn't a bug or exploit — it feels very intentional. The game wants you to be slashing as you move. Using slash proactively rather than reactively (only swinging when you see an enemy) fundamentally changes how the movement feels. Try holding down the attack button loosely and slashing through sections even without specific targets. You'll notice the rhythm of movement becomes faster and more fluid.

Level-Specific Skips Worth Learning

Without spoiling specific level layouts in detail, here are the categories of skips that appear repeatedly across the game's design:

The "missed platform" skip: In several levels, there's a sequence where you're supposed to climb up to a higher platform, then move right. But if you perform a running jump from the lower section, you can clear the gap directly and skip the entire vertical climb. Look for these whenever the intended route takes you significantly upward before going forward.

The "enemy room" bypass: Rooms that appear to be mandatory combat encounters (where you might think you need to clear enemies to proceed) usually have a high route — a series of platforms along the top of the room that lets you move through without engaging. Explore upward aggressively in any room that feels like an arena.

The "long corridor" compress: Some horizontal sections are padded with multiple patrol enemies spaced across a long corridor. The fastest route is a series of jump-slashes at full sprint — you hit each enemy with the air slash before they can attack you and you never break running momentum. This takes some practice but is extremely satisfying once it clicks.

Managing Your Resources Efficiently

When running levels for time or score efficiency, resource management changes significantly compared to casual play:

• Health pickups: In speedrun-style play, you'll often take calculated damage to save time — eating a hit to skip an enemy interaction rather than maneuvering around them. Knowing where health pickups are lets you budget your health accordingly. Take hits early in a section if you know a health orb is coming in the next room.
• Checkpoints: In casual play, hitting every checkpoint is smart. In time-focused play, checkpoints that require a slight detour can be skipped if you're confident in your run.
• Extra lives: Less relevant for pure speed, but if you're going for completion score alongside speed, knowing collectible locations helps you route optimally through each level.

Building Mental Maps

The single biggest difference between a casual playthrough and an efficient one is mental mapping. Advanced players don't experience levels as "what comes next?" — they experience them as a sequence of pre-planned decisions. Before you even jump, you know what you're going to do on landing. Before an enemy appears, you've already decided how to handle it.

The only way to build this is repetition. Run a level until the early sections feel completely automatic, then push your focus to the next section. Keep going until you can run the entire level without conscious decision-making. When you get there, you'll be faster than you thought possible — because you're no longer spending any cognitive bandwidth on things you've already solved.

This sounds like a grind, but it doesn't have to be. If you break it down by section and genuinely enjoy the act of optimizing a small piece at a time, the repetition becomes its own reward. There's something deeply satisfying about watching a section that once took you three attempts smooth out into a single clean run.

A Note on Enjoyment

I want to end on this: efficient play doesn't have to come at the expense of fun. Some of the most joyful moments I've had with Super Ninja Adventure have come from nailing a tricky skip for the first time or stringing together a wall-jump chain so perfectly that it feels like flying. The advanced techniques in this game are there to be discovered and enjoyed, not just optimized for a number on a screen.

Play the way that makes you happy. If chasing times motivates you, chase them. If you just want to get through the hard section that's been blocking you, apply one technique at a time and enjoy watching it get easier. Either way, you're playing a genuinely good game — and you're playing it better than you were before.