Post
Beating the game while picking up as little as possible, because real speedrunners don't need upgrades.
Low% (or Minimum%) runs challenge runners to complete a game while collecting the absolute minimum number of items, upgrades, or resources. This often means fighting bosses with starting equipment, navigating areas without movement upgrades that make traversal trivial, and finding creative workarounds for sections that seem to require specific items. Low% routes are frequently harder than any% because you're deliberately weakening yourself while still trying to progress. The category definition varies by game: some track items collected, others track percentage counters, and community debate over what counts as 'minimum' can get surprisingly heated.
Example
Super Metroid Low% requires completing the game with only the 14 mandatory items out of 100 total. Without optional energy tanks, beam upgrades, or movement items, boss fights become grueling endurance tests and movement through certain areas requires obscure techniques like mockballing and wall jumping that would be trivial with normal upgrades.
Why it matters
Low% runs reveal which items developers actually made mandatory versus which ones just feel mandatory. They push game knowledge to the extreme and often discover that games are beatable with far less than designers intended, exposing the gap between intended and actual minimum requirements.
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