Portal Alive Kicking Alive Kicking speedrun guide
Chamber routing, portal saves, and the five habits that cut your total.
Portal: Alive & Kicking does not ship a built-in timer or a leaderboard on launch day. That does not stop the community from timing runs. This guide covers the skills that cut minutes from a first clean clear — portal economy, fling routing, and the five habits that separate a casual chamber clear from a time-saving one. A video reference run is embedded above; treat it as Chambers 00 through 19 footage, not as a routing gospel for the 2026 escape sequence.
Speedrunning Alive & Kicking is single-player. There is no one to impress except GLaDOS, and she has heard every joke already.
What matters and what does not
Original Portal scored runs on three axes: time, portal count, and steps. Until the community maps which of those Alive & Kicking tracks officially, the practical speedrun is a low-time clear — finish Chambers 00 through 19 plus the escape as fast as you can without sequence breaks.
What actually saves time:
- Fewer portals fired. One good pair beats a six-portal staircase every time.
- Air portals placed while in flight. Chamber 09 is the first test of this skill; Chamber 18 is the final exam.
- No death. Dying costs a reload. Reloading costs seconds.
- Intentional routing, not reflexes. A faster wrong turn still costs a reload.
What does not save time on a first clean run:
- Frame-perfect anything. This is not a frame-perfect game.
- Skipping chambers. The campaign is sequential. Until the community finds a stable skip, a run that bypasses a chamber is not valid.
- Noclip. Source achievements refuse
sv_cheats 1.
Chamber-by-chamber time saves
Chambers 00–05: the quick start
00. Walk. The vault opens automatically. Do not look for a shortcut; there is not one.
01. Two portals, one pair. Walk through. No cube, no button, no decision. One pair of portals is the intended line.
02. Portal gun arrives. One good floor portal plus the room’s orange gets the cube to the button in seconds. Do not overthink the barrel.
03–04. Pit chambers. The time save here is not a trick — it is not falling. Fall once and you respawn at the entrance. Fall twice and you have lost more time than any routing save.
05. Fizzler. Carry the cube around the grill, not through it. If you emancipate the cube, wait for the dropper. That wait is the floor of your time loss.
Chambers 06–10: the fling window
06. First real fling. Portal on the pit floor, portal on the ledge wall, fall in. The time save over a careful step-down is roughly four seconds. The risk is a mis-land that costs twenty.
07–08. Same idea with a second landing or a second cube. Chamber 08 in this remake is a sightline room — the lighting makes it look impressive in screenshots, and the trick is still a clean fling.
09. Momentum chain. Place the entry portal while airborne. The skill ceiling for Chamber 09 sets the tone for everything after it. If you can chain this cleanly, Chambers 13 through 18 become a routing problem, not a puzzle.
10. Unstationary scaffolds. Ride the platform. Do not sprint across the open acid lane — the zoom trick (F) on a distant panel is not faster than riding.
Chambers 11–16: colour discipline
11. Dual portal gun. Park blue as a permanent exit. Recycle orange only when the room demands it. Colour discipline across these chambers saves portal budget and mental load.
12–14. Cube routing through walls. If you are carrying a cube through a grill, you have already made a routing error. The intended line keeps cubes on their side of walls.
15. Timing and pellets. Watch the catcher. A pellet that dies in a wall is a failed routing line that costs a reload.
16. Turrets. Cube as shield, portal behind, or pick up and tip. Do not run the open lane. The remake’s lighting makes the sightlines sharper; the time save from clean turret handling is not style — it is avoiding a reload.
Chambers 17–19: the expensive ones
17. Companion cube plus pellets. The cube is a tool, not a pet. Route the pellet first, then handle the cube. Launch-week testers reported a softlock risk tied to catcher placement — a failed routing line here costs more than seconds.
18. The exam. Multiple flings, cubes, and a softlock risk on day one. Keep a save at the previous grill. A clean Chamber 18 is the single biggest time save in the run; a botched one is the single biggest time loss.
19. Victory lift. When GLaDOS’s script turns, stop timing. The escape is not in this speedrun category.
The five habits of a clean run
- Manual save at every chamberlock. Autosaves were unreliable at launch. A chamberlock reload costs five seconds; a softlock reload costs two minutes.
- One pair of portals at a time. Blue and orange are finite in placement. Placing a third portal removes one of the first two. Manage that inventory.
- Never carry a cube through a grill. The emancipation grill resets the cube. The dropper respawns it. That respawn animation is your time cost.
- Air portal placement. If a portal must be placed mid-fling, place it before you leave the previous surface. Practice Chamber 09 until the air portal is automatic.
- Zoom (
F) is not optional on tight surfaces. Advanced chambers narrow portalable surfaces. If you are not zooming in Advanced, you are missing panels.
Advanced and elite
A low-time clean run through the story course is the foundation. Advanced chambers add difficulty without adding a timer. Elite maps, promised as future free content on the release notes, will presumably add a leaderboard context. Until then, the story run is the speedrun.
The tier list ranks which chambers are hardest to clear cleanly — that is the routing priority list. Chamber 18 is both the hardest and the most rewarding time save.
What a first clean run looks like
No deaths, no excessive portal budget, Chambers 00 through 19 in a single session. The embedded video above is the closest public reference. The 2026 escape is new, so late-chamber routing after GLaDOS fires is documented in text on how to beat GLaDOS rather than in ten-year-old footage.
A first clean run should be completion, not a personal best. The community will find the skips; your job is to finish the course legally so you have a baseline to beat.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers for testers stuck in Aperture.
Does this game have a speedrun timer?
Not built-in on 1.0. The community times runs externally. A clean low-time run is the goal until a leaderboard exists.
What is the most important speedrun skill?
Air portal placement. Chamber 09 is the first test of it; Chamber 18 is the final exam. Practice until the portal is automatic mid-fling.
Can I skip chambers in a speedrun?
Not yet. The campaign is sequential. Until the community finds a stable skip, any bypass is an invalid run.
Do deaths reset the timer?
Yes. Dying forces a reload. A death-free run is faster than a run with deaths even if you nail every trick.
Are Advanced chambers part of the speedrun?
Not at 1.0. Advanced is a separate mode. Elite maps, promised as future content, will presumably define that category when they ship.