View source for Alan Wake/Game Mechanics and Glitches

=Game Mechanics=

==Movement==
Sprinting is the fastest but only lasts about 10 seconds, then it takes some time to recover. Jumping is the next fastest thing and sprint energy is also recovered while doing it. Jumping about 7-8 times should restore full sprint.

There are some areas where you are restricted to certain movement, e.g. only walking or only running and jumping, so just try to find the fastest possible movement in a certain area.

There are however also some triggers that make you walk slowly for a certain amount of time. Those triggers can often be circumvented by jumping at the same time the slow walk would be triggered. This makes the slow walk be started while in the air and landing resets it to normal movement. Most triggers are at a certain place, so you need to find some refence in the map, but at least one trigger is time-based after a certain event.

In instances where you can't jump, because the slow walking is triggered at spawn, you can sometimes walk over some objects to trigger a small falling animation, which resets back to normal movement (e.g. after the car crash in Episode 1, you can use the suitcases for that).

==Slowmotions==
The game often tries to warn you of enemies by use of a slowmotion and forced camera movement that shows the incoming enemies, however you can often prevent this. Often the game doesn't warn you about enemies if it knows that you are already aware of them.

* Looking directly towards flocks of birds that would trigger a warning slowmotion prevents it (not all birds do, sometimes only the first flock of many, sometimes several times, sometimes it seems slightly random)
* Sometimes looking towards Taken isn't enough and you also have to shine light on them to skip the slowmotion, either from your flashlight or a flare

There are also some other slowmotions:
* When you start sprinting while an enemies is about to hit you, there is a dodging slowmotion. So you may want to avoid starting to sprint when enemies very close, maybe jump a few times, then start to sprint.
* When you fire a flaregun directly at a Taken, it will often start a slowmotion, so better fire the flaregun near the Taken, not directly at them.

==Forced Camera==
Often the game will forcibly move the camera to show you something. Most of the time you can start moving again once the camera begins to move back to Alan, so you should just keep the movement keys pressed and try that out. Although you may move in the direction the camera is poinint, so you might have to compensate for that a little.

==Avoiding Taken==
You should of course fight as few Taken as possible. Most of the time you don't have to kill them and can just run by.

Blinding the Take works light that:
* If you shine a strong light on them, they are stunned for a few moments and cover their eyes
* If you keep shining the light on them, they will keep covering their eyes and move towards you
* If you get the light off them until they recover, you can blind them and stun them again, this is especially useful when you have to wait at the same place for some time

If you drop a flare, the Taken will mostly move away from Alan's position, even if the flare should push them in the other direction.

==Killing Taken==
There are some Taken you have to kill, either because they block the way completely or they are boss fights.

If you have a flaregun or flashbangs, use that.

==Respawning Taken==
Some places have infinite respawn of Taken, so killing all the Taken might not be advisable, even if you have the means (like lots of flashbangs). More Taken might just respawn further ahead, so it's better to keep some alive (ideally exactly one) and just have him follow you while blinding him to keep him away. If possible, you ofc kill none of them, but if you have a long way to go that could be dangerous. If you have a flare, just use that to keep them away though.

==Shortcuts/Invisible walls/Deathzones==
It's not easy to deviate from the given path in this game, because there are a lot of invisible walls and "death zones", meaning places where you just die, even if you should make it based on the height of the drop.

==Types of Taken==
* Small Taken
** The small Taken are pretty fast, have small weapons they attack pretty fast with but are also easy to kill
* Throwing Taken
** These Taken throw axes at you, but can also attack in close combat. But often they tend to stay away a bit longer. Blinding them can keep them away for pretty long.
* Big Taken
** Those have a pretty dangerous attack and are not even that slow. Most importantly, they have an "anger"-attack, where they basicially ignore if you blind them and just run at you in a rather straight line.
* Teleporters
** Teleporters you have to kill in a Speedrun can be pretty annoying, because they start teleporting around and you can't really hit them with your light. But there are strategies to deal with them.
* Birds
** You can usually ignore birds (except for the slowmotion), although they can get dangerous when there are many of them.

=Glitches=

==Car Teleport==
This glitch allows you to get out of the car more quickly.

* You are in the car driving
* You press exit to make Alan start getting out of the car
* Instantly after this (you don't have too much time, because getting out of the car makes it stop), you block the left door of the car with some object in the map, by driving up to it
* This will make Alan teleport on the roof of the car and skip the slow open door/close door animation