Hekathon Offline 24

Sup,

if you can believe it, Hekathon Offline 2023 was my first event ever. First IRL event I went to, and my first marathon performance. Throughout the year, I kept submitting to more marathons, travelled all around Europe, but most importantly found some of my best and closest friends during that time. Last week was Hekathon Offline 2024, and it was really special to re-visit the place that started it all.

Was the event fun? Hell to the yes. Seeing the fam always warms my heart. Tl;dr I feel like this year I kept saying yes to way too many things. I participated in a lot of showcases, so much so I didn't have enough time to just hang out with friends who visited the event, which I feel a little sorry for. Luckily I at least got to use my Magic deck to play a game with people, which I was super happy with since it almost looked like I won't get the chance to due to absolutely stacked schedule.

Our World of Warcraft submission went great. I feel like they are a lot of fun for us, we show a lot of interesting mechanics, and the integrated timed mechanic of WoW M+ dungeon keys goes really well with the concept of speedrunning. It's something we can keep submitting to have a comfy 5-people coop run, with some extra people on the side doing the commentary. Also having a donation incentive where people can make the game harder for us by filling our screen with memes was a great idea, hurting runners is always a compelling donation incentive :D.

Jedi Academy relay race is a classic. Let me tell you one thing, including this one I have now participated in 4 relay races. JKA on Hek online 2023, Mirror's Edge at ESA Summer 24, Halo 3 at ESA Summer 24, and JKA on Hek offline 2024. And I lost all - of - them. Every single one. At the start I was a little sad about it, I was worried that by not playing well I would lose it for my team. But now my mentality is a lot different, it's all about the fun and banter, trashing the other team and everything. Highlight of this run for me was a member of my team failing a vjun1 skip in the most hilarious fashion possible. Bless you Mumrik, never change <3.

Swat 4 was a little bit of a clusterfuck, but we actually did it pretty much on time. We were practising this run for weeks, starting sometime after ESA Summer, but we could still do with some more weeks of practice. This run was all about coordination, and if one person fails, doesn't block doors or clear a corner, the whole team eventually get punished for that. But we had fun with it, and I personally really enjoyed the coop aspect of it.

I had a Flatout 3 showcase in the Four Wheeled Garbage block. Went pretty well all things considered, I believe people enjoyed the jank. Though the highlight of that was Eris trying to buy their game during setup time, failing time and time again (because regionlock) and having to go one floor up to purchase a PS Network voucher for the price of that game. Hilarious.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 1v1 glitchful "tournament" I had with heny was also great. I'll have you know, heny fucking destroyed me during practice. He built walls around my buildings and swarmed my base with dogs before I could do anything. So I took my practice seriously and came up with the most obnoxious strat imaginable, playing as the French and glitch building grand canons in heny's base, destroying him from within. And boy do I feel dirty for using that strat, poor heny got wrecked by that, but also by his hotkeys cause from the VOD I noticed he couldn't build his base for a while.

Minecraft vs Garry's Mod: A Buildoff Lovestory was a highlight. Loved it. Last year me and Laay did a 1v1 buildoff in Garry's mod and it was a lot of fun. However, what sort of sucked was that everyone had to wait for 10 minutes for us to finish building. This time, me and Laay were hosting this block, and added another duo that competed in a different game (Minecraft), so while one group was building, the other was showcasing their masterpieces and having them rated. And it went really good. We had yisk and Fabi for Garry's Mod, and inky and Myths for Minecraft. All of them hunted down last moment for this block, but they all really put themselves into it and made it a real success. We're doing this next year again for sure.

I really appreciate heny organizing the Yono relay run. Many runners, people switching after every room. Gave everyone chance to contribute and run in a marathon block. Everyone was included, everyone did their part. Great idea.

I also got to be a host for one shift, shouting out incentives, promoting our charity and sponsors, stuff like that. Really enjoyed that. The Elden Ring run happened during my shift, where they had troubles installing and we were already 20 minutes behind schedule before they even opened the game. Two highlights here: us having fun with it, showing the same Windows file transfer window twice next to each other (them copying over the game) and commentating it as a race. Second, me messing up their introduction and introducing catalystz and puppery as cattery and puppery. Funnily enough "cattery" is their team name for Elden Ring competitions. But they went with the joke, it was great.

Overall, Hekathon Offline 2024 was a highlight of this year. Imagine being at a marathon where you know everyone, and you're close to everyone. It's really unique and special, and I'm really happy that I can be a part of it.