Speedrun Guide

Do Not Look at the Sun runs about 30 minutes on a normal first playthrough, but the six stages themselves take only a couple of minutes once you already know every answer. This guide covers the order and timing choices that matter once solving isn't the bottleneck anymore.

Pick a Goal First

The two routes through this game pull in opposite directions, and going for both in one run wastes time. The six-stage Clear route rewards fast, confident inputs — drag, tear, type, done. The True Ending route rewards the opposite: opening Stage 1 and deliberately not touching anything. Decide which one you're timing before you start, because mixing them costs you the reset most runners end up needing anyway.

Shaving Time on the Six-Stage Route

• Stage 2: grab the nearest cloud first rather than chasing the one closest to the sun — any cloud dragged clear works, so don't wait for the "best" one to drift into position.
• Stage 3: this is the stage most likely to cost you time, since how many pages you need to tear depends on which real-world weekday the calendar starts on relative to the nearest Sunday. Runners going for a fast time reportedly set their system clock to a Sunday before starting, which removes the page-tearing step almost entirely.
• Stage 4: drag the volume slider straight to maximum in one motion rather than nudging it up — the sun's brightness updates continuously, so there's no need to check it mid-drag.
• Stage 5: know the stroke you're removing before you get here — hesitating over which line to take off the kanji is the single most common place casual runs lose time.
• Stage 6: type Japan and nothing else. Every flag on the Stage 6 Flag List works, but none of them are faster to type than the six letters in Japan.

The True Ending Route Is Not a Fast Route

It's tempting to assume the True Ending, which needs no puzzle-solving at all, is automatically the quicker way to finish the game. It isn't. The wait itself is the entire task, and players attempting it as fast as possible have reported times as low as 39 seconds against a general community estimate closer to a full minute — a real gap, but still far slower than the few seconds Stage 1's six-stage route takes when you simply hover over the sun immediately. If your goal is the fastest possible finish of any kind, the six-stage Clear route wins; the True Ending is a separate personal-best category of its own.

Resets

Because Stage 3's timing depends on the real-world day and the True Ending requires an untouched Stage 1, a run that goes wrong partway through is usually faster to abandon and restart than to recover from — there's no in-game rewind, only the option to start the stage over.

Whether you're chasing the six-stage Clear or the patience of the True Ending, both categories in Do Not Look at the Sun reward preparation over reflexes — decide on your route, know your answers cold, and the run itself takes care of the rest.