History Main / MinimalistRun

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon2': Octo Expansion'' has 80 missions/tests, but your main goal is to collect [[PlotCoupon four "thangs"]]. The fastest route to get all the "thangs" only requires you to complete 21 of these missions before granting you access to the final section of the campaign, but doing that would still be a standard speedrun. An actual minimalist run means using MercyMode to outright ''skip'' not only those levels, but also the various sections of the escape sequence, and even the FinalBoss itself. Granted, since this means repeatedly killing yourself at the start of each level until the game pities you enough to let you continue on, as opposed to actually playing the game, it isn't the most fun example of this trope by any measure.

** ''[[Videogame/MetroidZeroMission Zero Mission]]'' can be completed with only 9% of item collected, with the only combat upgrades being the Ice Beam, Plasma Beam, and a single pack of Missiles. At least, in the PAL version. Due to a design oversight, the US and Japanese versions bottom-out at 10%, as there's a set of missile blocks at the end of the game that can't be bypassed without getting either the Screw Attack, the Super Missiles, or an additional missile pack. Either way, the game rewards you with unique ending pictures for both Normal and Hard difficulties if a player manages to complete it with under 15% completion.

-> "Odd. No stink of Olympus on you, this time. Have you truly come all this way without assistance from your relatives?"
-->-- '''Hades''', Videogame/{{Hades}}

* Most Roguelike games (notable Roguelikes: ''VideoGame/NetHack'', ''{{VideoGame/Angband}}'', ''{{VideoGame/ADOM}}'', ''Moria'', and the original ''{{VideoGame/Rogue}}'') have variations called "challenge games" in which a player imposes limitations on himself. For example, in ''[=NetHack=]'', one such challenge game is to complete the game without ever eating any food; in ''ADOM'', one might try to complete the game without ever picking up more than the essential "quest artifacts". When you consider that Roguelike games, for the most part, do not allow you to restore from a save file after you die, those who complete challenge games are usually both very good and very obsessed. In ''[=NetHack=]'', the challenges (called 'conducts') you stick to are recorded by the game and included in the character dump at the end, whereas in ''Angband'' and its thousand variants, challenge modes (such as Ironman, where you cannot use up stairs, as well as others to make monsters smarter) could be set in options.

** There's another challenge that replaces No Overdrives (NO) with No Items (NI). Neither have been completed.

** ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'' is probably the ultimate example of the minimalist run being the furthest thing from a regular speedrun as you can get, with the Low% world record clocking in at a [[SarcasmMode blazing fast]] ''16 hours''. That's 10 hours longer than the ''100%'' world record. It's all due to an improperly looped ItemGet animation that causes Link to inch backwards at a torturously slow pace while also disabling his collision, as explained in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2nRW3wKnVY this video]].

** ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild Breath of the Wild]]'' allows players to skip ''everything'' after the [[NoobCave Great Plateau]] and just go straight to the final boss.

* ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion'' keeps track of how much money you earn; at the end of the game, you get a mansion whose size depends on how much money you have, becoming higher quality the more you have. The minimalist run aims to get Ending H (where your total money is between 5,000G to 4,999,999G), in which Luigi ends up with a tent. This is even harder to obtain than the best mansion, as you deliberately have to avoid collecting any kind of money other than the one treasure Luigi automatically collects (King Boo's Crown, worth 5,000G) to get it.

* Any ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' game ([[VideoGame/SuperMarioBros SMB 1]], [[VideoGame/SuperMarioBrosTheLostLevels Lost Levels]], [[VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3 SMB 3]], [[VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld SMW]], [[VideoGame/SuperMarioLand SML]], [[VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBros New SMB]], [[VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBrosWii New SMB Wii]], etc.): No power suits. Still too easy? No mushrooms.

** ''[[Videogame/MetroidZeroMission Zero Mission]]'' can be completed with only 9%[[hottip:*:PAL version only - due to a design mistake, the US and Japanese versions require 10%, as there's a set of missile blocks at the end of the game that can't be bypassed without getting either the Screw Attack, the Super Missiles, or a second missile pack]] with the only combat upgrades being the Ice Beam, Plasma Beam, and a single pack of Missiles. Some of the ending pictures can only even be accomplished by beating the game with completion under 15%.
** It's possible to beat ''[[VideoGame/MetroidFusion Fusion]]'' with ''none'' of the collectables that count towards percentage[[note]]abilities are not considered collectables in this game, so only the missiles, energy tanks, and power bombs count[[/note]], using a glitch to bypass needing the one "mandatory" missile tank.
** ''VideoGame/MetroidOtherM'' enforces a no item expansion run in Hard Mode, keeping the player locked at 99 energy and 10 missiles. It also removes the LastChanceHitPoint mechanic, and [[spoiler:prevents you from facing the TrueFinalBoss]].
** In ''Videogame/SuperMetroid'', it is possible for a human to beat the game with only 14% of the items, dictated in part by the amount of damage that must be done to [[spoiler:Mother Brain's first form]] with only missiles. Two variations exist, one involving the Ice Beam and the other involving the Speed Booster, but the Ice Beam route is the easier to execute by a human. Tool-assisted speedrunners, however, have knocked down the completion rate to 2%, completing the game in a mere 2 minutes (by the in-game timer) by corrupting the game's memory and executing arbitrary code to make the game skip to the ending.

** The 3DS port was apparently designed with this type of run in mind, as in addition to tracking your high score, it also keeps a record of your ''lowest'' score.

* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' gave rise to the minimum shots fired challenge, all-grenade challenge, handgun and knife challenge, and no merchant challenge. Combining the last two results in the handgun and knife no merchant challenge, in which the player must complete the game using only the combat knife and unupgraded basic handgun; in this challenge, boss fights can take upwards of two hours each. Interestingly, the FinalBoss seems to have been specifically designed to be beatable using only the handgun and knife.

** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilVillage'' sees the return of "knife runs" being an achievement in the game with the "Knives Out" achievement/trophy given for completing the game using only the knife to kill enemies and bosses, with guns only being allowed on certain setpieces.

** It's possible to beat ''[[VideoGame/MetroidFusion Fusion]]'' with ''none'' of the collectables that count towards percentage[note]abilities are not considered collectables in this game, so only the missiles, energy tanks, and power bombs count[/note], using a glitch to bypass needing the one "mandatory" missile tank.

** It's possible to beat ''[[VideoGame/MetroidFusion Fusion]]'' with as few as 1% of the collectibles. A "0% run" is also technically possible, but requires superhuman [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSn6yNuk--g timing]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDVQ3hyLX84 precision]] and for a long time was considered impossible without tool assistance.

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'' is a good example of how a minimalist run can be the exact opposite of a speedrun. The game's main campaign has 65 kettle levels and 4 boss battles prior to the final segment of the main campaign (that being [[spoiler:the Space Center climb and the Mr. Grizz fight]]). While all the boss fights are mandatory, the same can only be said for four of the standard kettle levels: the four Crater levels. Fuzzy Ooze is the only thing impeding progression across the main overworld of Alterna, with the boss kettles in that region not requiring the player to beat all the other levels on their respective islands like in previous games. Eggs collected in the Crater don't carry over to Alterna, so you may think that this means a minimalist run has you playing and replaying the first Alterna level ("Get to Know Alterna, Your Only Choice") to get the necessary 9200 Power Eggs to beeline to all the bosses, but you'll instead find yourself with time-consuming task of [[https://youtu.be/-znxjnRkOQo?t=628 grinding on the Power Egg balloon that floats around the island]], which you can just ''barely'' reach from the starting area. Considering this means waiting for a slow-moving balloon to pass by so you can hopefully time and land a precise Smallfry toss[[note]](if you miss, it's actually faster to kill yourself to soft reset its movement cycle, rather than wait for it come back around)[[/note]], after which you must exit and reenter the entire game mode so the balloon respawns, then repeating the process 91 more times? Don't expect to end up on any speedrun leaderboards anytime soon.

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'' is a good example of how a minimalist run can be the exact opposite of a speedrun. The game's main campaign has 65 kettle levels and 4 boss battles prior to the final segment of the main campaign (that being [[spoiler:the Space Center climb and the Mr. Grizz fight]]). While all the boss fights are mandatory, the same can only be said for four of the standard kettle levels: the four Crater levels. Fuzzy Ooze is the only thing impeding progression across the main overworld of Alterna, with the boss kettles in that region not requiring the player to beat all the other levels on their respective islands like in previous games. Eggs collected in the Crater don't carry over to Alterna, so you may think that this means a minimalist run has you playing and replaying the first Alterna level ("Get to Know Alterna, Your Only Choice") to get the necessary 9200 Power Eggs to beeline to all the bosses, but you'll instead find yourself with time-consuming task of [[https://youtu.be/-znxjnRkOQo?t=628 grinding on the Power Egg balloon that floats around the stage]], which you can just ''barely'' reach from the starting area. Considering this means waiting for a slow-moving balloon to pass by so you can hopefully time and land a precise Smallfry toss[[note]](if you miss, it's actually faster to kill yourself to soft reset its movement cycle, rather than wait for it come back around)[[/note]], after which you must exit and reenter the entire game mode so the balloon respawns, then repeating the process 91 more times? Even someone doing an "all missions" speedrun will have finished the game by the time you've collect the needed eggs.

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'' has 65 kettle levels and 4 boss battles prior to the final segment of the main campaign. While all the boss fights are mandatory, the same can only be said for five of the standard kettle levels: the four Crater levels and the first Alterna level ("Get to Know Alterna, Your Only Choice"). Since Fuzzy Ooze is the only thing impeding progression across the overworld, with the boss kettles in Alterna not requiring the player to beat all the other levels on their respective islands like in the main campaigns of previous games, one can simply decide to continuously grind Power Eggs in that first Alterna stage until they have enough to power-up Smallfry and make it to said boss kettles. How fun actually doing that would be is another story.

* There's at least one LetsPlay of someone trying this in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'': not doing any of the character-specific sidequests (or any sidequests at all) and just going through the main game. [[KillEmAll Tragedy ensues]]. [[note]]Completing sidequests is necessary to keep members of your party from being KilledOffForReal in the final dungeon. At ''minimum'' you'll lose three of them just ''getting'' to the final dungeon without sidequests.[[/note]]

* ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'''s ''Octo Expansion'' DLC campaign has 80 missions/tests, but your main goal is to collect [[PlotCoupon four "thangs"]]. The fastest route to get all the "thangs" only requires you to complete 21 of these missions before granting you access to the final section of the campaign, but doing that would still be a standard speedrun. An actual minimalist run means using MercyMode to outright ''skip'' not only those levels, but also the various sections of the escape sequence, and even the FinalBoss itself. Granted, since this means repeatedly killing yourself at the start of each level until the game pities you enough to let you continue on, as opposed to actually playing the game, it isn't the most fun example of this trope by any measure.

* There's at least one LetsPlay of someone trying this in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'': not doing any of the character-specific sidequests (or any sidequests at all) and just going through the main game. [[KillEmAll Tragedy ensues]].

* ''VideoGame/TheEvilWithin2'' requires this when playing on "[[HarderThanHard Classic Mode]]", as you won't be able to upgrade any of your skills or weapons. Of course, you could still play the game regularly without upgrading anything either way.

!!Examples

* ''VideoGame/KemonoHeroes'' has an achievement called "Broken Run" which requires that the players beat the whole game without ever entering the shop, meaning they can't upgrade any of their weapons or stats and can't heal or stock up on magic between levels.