Welcome to our VHOLUME beginner guide. If you have just started playing and the movement feels simple but your times are nowhere near the players on the leaderboard, you are not alone. The game looks easy at first, but there are several movement mechanics and small tricks that are not explained very well.
In this guide, we’ll cover 10 useful VHOLUME tips for beginners, including how sliding works, how to maintain momentum, how to improve your jumps, recover from mistakes, find shortcuts, use ghosts, and approach speed boosts.
VHOLUME Beginner Guide and Walkthrough – Sliding TIPS
You don’t need to master everything immediately. Start with the basics, practice one technique at a time, and you’ll gradually understand why faster players move through the same levels so differently.
1. Learn How Sliding Works
Sliding is one of the most important movement mechanics in VHOLUME, but it is easy to misunderstand when you first start playing.
I initially thought the slide was mainly useful for going underneath obstacles. However, sliding on flat ground can actually help you gain speed.
According to the developer, a flat-ground slide starts at roughly 1,600 units of speed. That means you can deliberately use a slide to build momentum instead of only using it when the level requires you to crouch.
The important thing to remember is that the speed does not last forever. Your slide gradually loses speed, eventually moving back toward crouch speed.
For beginners, the simple rule is:
Slide to gain speed, then transition before the speed disappears.
Don’t stay in a slide for too long just because you are already moving quickly.
2. Keep Moving Forward When Sliding
Sometimes you will press crouch while running and expect to slide, but your character simply crouches instead.
This can feel inconsistent at first, but your movement input matters.
The developer has explained that if you are moving faster than roughly 700 units and fail to enter the slide, the game may interpret the input differently if your forward movement is interrupted as you press crouch.
This can instantly destroy your momentum.
As a beginner, try to keep your forward movement committed while starting the slide. Once you get used to the timing, sliding becomes much more consistent.
If your character keeps crouching instead of sliding, pay attention to your forward input before blaming the movement system.
3. Use Bunny Jumps to Keep Momentum
Sliding gives you speed, but the speed naturally starts to disappear.
This is where bunny jumping becomes useful.
The developer has explained that after traveling a few meters, a bunny jump can interrupt a flat-ground slide from slowing all the way down to crouch speed.
A basic movement sequence you can practice is:
Slide → build speed → bunny jump → land → continue moving.
You don’t have to wait for an obstacle before using this technique. Open sections of the map can also be used to build momentum.
When I started thinking about empty ground as part of the movement system, my runs became much more consistent.
4. Focus on Your Landing
One of the easiest mistakes for beginners is judging a jump only by whether they landed.
Landing successfully doesn’t automatically mean you made a good jump.
In VHOLUME, your landing position can determine how quickly you perform your next movement. A jump that looks impressive might actually be slower if it forces you to turn, correct your position or stop your momentum.
Try to think about three things:
- Where am I taking off?
- Where am I going to land?
- What movement am I doing immediately afterward?
Sometimes a smaller jump is better because it places you directly into your next slide, wall movement or corner.
If you repeatedly land safely but still lose time, try changing your takeoff position instead of only adjusting your movement in midair.
5. Don’t Restart Every Time You Make a Mistake
As a beginner, it is tempting to restart the moment you miss a platform.
I used to do exactly that.
But VHOLUME gives you ways to recover from mistakes. Wall interactions can sometimes allow you to climb back up or continue moving even after you fall away from the intended route.
Repeated wall interactions can even provide effectively unlimited climbing in certain situations.
The developer has confirmed that this is intentional, although it is not necessarily meant to replace the fastest racing route.
So when you miss a jump, don’t immediately press restart.
First, look around.
Can a wall save you? Can you climb back up? Can you reach another platform?
A mistake might cost you a few seconds without actually ending your run.
6. Look for Faster Routes
Once you can complete a level consistently, the next step is learning that the obvious route isn’t always the fastest one.
VHOLUME encourages players to experiment with momentum, shortcuts and alternative paths.
This means you should start looking beyond the route that appears to be directly in front of you.
Check areas such as:
- Ledges beside staircases
- Nearby rooftops
- Walls that look decorative
- Platforms below the normal route
- Gaps that appear reachable
- Alternative paths around corners
When I started watching faster players, one of the biggest surprises was seeing them completely ignore sections that I thought were mandatory.
If another player is several seconds faster than you, don’t automatically assume they have better movement.
They might simply be taking a better route.
7. Use Ghosts to Improve Your Runs
The ghost system is one of the best learning tools available in VHOLUME.
A leaderboard can tell you that another player finished faster than you, but a ghost can show you where the time difference happened.
As a beginner, don’t immediately try to copy the world-record run.
There is usually too much happening at once.
Instead, follow a player who is only slightly faster than you.
Watch the first point where they begin pulling away.
Maybe they:
- Start their slide earlier
- Jump from a different position
- Take a different corner
- Skip a platform
- Use a wall differently
- Carry more momentum into the next section
Once you identify that one difference, focus on fixing it in your own run.
This is much easier than trying to copy an entire perfect run at once.
8. Learn How Speed Boosts Work
Later levels introduce things such as speed boosts and jump pads.
These can make you significantly faster, but they don’t replace the basic movement skills you learn earlier.
Instead, they amplify them.
For example, hitting a speed boost can give you a huge amount of speed. But if you immediately overcorrect after the boost, that extra speed can actually make your movement harder to control.
The important question isn’t:
“How fast did this boost make me?”
Instead, ask:
“Can I still use this speed during my next few movements?”
Try to plan your exit before hitting the boost.
The goal isn’t simply to become fast for one moment. You want to carry that speed into the next part of the route.
9. Don’t Grind the Same Level Forever
VHOLUME rewards mastery, so it is easy to become obsessed with improving your time.
But there is a point where repeating the same route stops teaching you anything.
If you have spent 20 minutes running the same section and you’re making exactly the same mistakes, take a break from it.
Play another level.
Explore a different area.
Practice your movement somewhere else.
The developers have also indicated that the core game is not intended to be blocked behind extreme speed requirements.
You don’t need to turn every level into a perfect-time challenge immediately.
Sometimes the best way to improve a level is to leave it for a while and return later with better movement instincts.
10. Explore Before You Chase the Timer
Speed isn’t the only reason to explore VHOLUME.
The developers have also talked about environmental and narrative elements that players can discover while moving through the maps.
When you’re constantly watching the timer, you can easily miss interesting parts of the environment.
Take some runs where you don’t care about your time.
Look at the rooftops.
Check where different walls lead.
See whether a drop connects to another area.
Pay attention to how different sections of the map connect together.
This exploration can actually help your speedrunning later.
Once you understand the map without worrying about the clock, you return to the timed run with much more information about possible routes.
VHOLUME can look like a simple run-and-jump game when you first start playing, but there is much more happening underneath the basic controls.
Once you understand how sliding, bunny jumping, momentum, wall movement, alternative routes and ghosts work together, your runs start to feel completely different.
The biggest beginner mistake is trying to move faster before learning how to move efficiently. Take your time, learn the maps, watch other players and experiment with different routes.
Eventually, you’ll stop seeing a wall as something blocking your path and start asking yourself whether it is actually another way forward.