In the last five years or so, I've become aware of an increasing number of interesting randomizers for lots of different kinds of games.
(For reference: A randomizer is a mod or alternate mode for a game which randomizes some aspects of the game. Most commonly this will be things like item placement or enemy locations.)
I'm a big fan of randomizers as a way to replay a game in a fresh, new way or to encourage strategies that may one may not have used in the original version.
Some notable randomizers include:
[The Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Randomizer](https://sotn.io/), which shuffles around all the items you can pick up. Very popular for speedruns.
[The Super Metroid/ Link to the Past combo randomizer](https://samus.link/), which shuffles around item pickups *between the two games* and provides some portals on each map to jump from one game to another.
[The Ocarina of Time Randomizer](https://ootrandomizer.com/) which gives you pretty fine control over what constraints items are allowed to be shuffled. You can make it always "solvable" without glitches, or "solvable" with some truly wild OOT tricks. Also very popular for speedrunning.
[The Sonic Adventure Randomizer](https://github.com/Sora-yx/SADX-Randomizer) which "is a mod for the PC version of SADX. This mod load random characters into random stages in a random order with some custom layout to make them beatable. " There are also versions of Sonic Adventure and SA2 randomizers which shuffle around the voice lines in cutscenes.
And, a personal favorite, the [Bloodstained: Symphony of the Night Randomizer](https://playbloodstained.com/1125/) which is an official game mode unlocked after beating the main game. It gives you a lot of knobs to turn for what things you want to be shuffled!
What games have randomizers that you like, and what do they randomize?
Obligatory Dark Souls 1 enemy and item randomizers. High degrees of customizability and will really test your skill and knowledge of the world. Obviously it will be unbalanced: you will probably have the hardest time in the start of the game (particularly the gargoyles becoming 2 random bosses) and it will only get easier but it's still fun especially when you find a great item in a random place.
Also, the exact same stuff in [Hollow Knight](https://www.nexusmods.com/hollowknight/mods/9)!
@TheFragranceOfDarkCoffee#22974 Just wanted to say that those cross-game randomizers are something incredible–the Metroid/LTTP one blew my mind when I watched the race at SGDQ2019.
The Universal Pokemon Randomizer flies under the radar at the point, but it‘s pretty unreal how powerful that program is. While randomizing a run to the max will just result in a totally broken game, you start to see how pristine the inner math of pokemon is when you choose just the right things to mess up. Given that it works on at least 5 generations of pokemon, there’s definitely a lot to get out of it.
I love the idea of these for speedrunning, as it constitutes an entirely different skillset. I read an article years about about the Link to the Past randomizer. The idea of a speedrunner being handed a randomized world and they have to utilize their creativity and game knowledge to go as quickly as possible is really cool. I think speedrunners need these skills when they‘re designing runs and trying to find new creative ways to move through the game quickly, but when you’re watching a stream those aren‘t the skills you see highlighted. Instead it’s all about those insane muscle memory skills on display. Obviously there's no real way to have a leaderboard for this sort of thing, but is there anyone doing side-by-side competitions? Like two speedrunners for a game sit down and are given the exact same randomized load up and they race to see who can beat it first, maybe?
My favorite is the DSVania Randomizer. It is incredibly versatile and can be as simple or wacky as you want, and it works on Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia. The coolest feature to me is the map randomization, which actually puts together all the rooms in completely new ways with a fully working map. I imagine that the amount of work that went into making this work without having fail states and softlocks must have been immense. Also, I can confirm that the rom files produced work great on real hardware if you've got a flash cart (and even on a Wii U if you want to get wild with hacking and injecting that sort of thing).
@CidNight#23405 In fact, there are many examples of this! If you search “randomizer speedrun race” you‘ll get a lot of hits, but here’s a sampling of a few:
@tapevulture#23123 I tried to load a item and enemy randomizer after seeing this post but it crashes a few minutes in. I‘m not trying to ask for tech help. I’ll figure it out eventually but I really want to try this.
@Snowdecahedron#23641 it turned out to be the dGPU in my surface book. I installed it on my regular gaming desktop and it ran fine with very few crashes. I also got the dragon Kalameet at the bell gargoyles and i had to load load cheet engine and one hit kill that guy.