Movement

Walking
Walking can allow for precise movement, as well as the ability to immediately cancel into a move or change direction. While this can be useful, there is enough tech that can be done to mitigate the weaknesses of running that walking is not something done commonly for anything but minor spacing adjustments. Each character has a different max walk speed, as well as a walk accel stat that determines how fast they can reach that top speed.

Dashing
When you press forward, your character will enter an initial dash before they begin running. During initial dash, you can jump, parry/roll, immediately turn around and begin a dash in the other direction, drop from platforms, or use strong attacks, specials, and dash attack. You can not crouch, use tilts, or stop moving before the dash is over. While dashing is a bit of a commitment, options like jumping or wavedashing allow for mixups out of a dash.

Each character has a different speed and duration for their initial dash, resulting in many different distances. Knowing the length (both time-wise and distance-wise) of your character's initial dash can be helpful for learning how to move with them more precisely. Data for each variable is listed below. The initial dash speed is pixels per frame, time is in frames, distance is in pixels.


 * Shovel Knight with momentum mail and Etalus on ice/with ice armor both slide after their initial dash. While they are moving forward, they are completely actionable and act as if they are standing still.
 * the numbers in parentheses for Wrastor are for his speed in slipstream

Running
If you continue to hold forward when your initial dash is over, you will enter a run, which you will stay in until you run off the stage or are otherwise interrupted. You can stop a run by jumping, parrying/rolling, crouching, letting go of the input, or with a dash attack, a strong attack or a special move. Note that while running, you should try to avoid turning around normally, as there is a long turnaround animation. Instead, you'll want to do something called cactuar dashing, where you quickly crouch before dashing back. While crouching does take some time, if you do it quick enough, it will be faster. In addition to cactuar dashing, crouching to cancel a run will allow you to stop on a dime or perform tilts in place.

Reverse Aerial Rush (RAR)
Back airs are a strong move for many characters that are balanced by being a bit harder to line up. One way you can set yourself up to land a bair is by using RAR. In order to do so, you want to run, turnaround, and jump during the turnaround. Be sure to quickly hold back in the direction you're moving to carry all of your momentum into the jump.

Wavedashing
By jumping and immediately airdodging into the ground, you will perform a wavedash, a short grounded slide that you can act out of. You can input the airdodge while in jumpsquat, the startup of your jump, making the input very lenient. Your angle while wavedashing can be anything from all the way left or right to being straight down; if you find yourself accidentally airdodging while trying to wavedash, try to angle the stick down a little more! Wavedashing is useful for weaving in and out of your opponent's range to bait attacks, sneaking in quickly to whiff punish etc.. When wavedashing, keep in mind the drawbacks it has compared to dashing/running: you are more actionable out of a wavedash, but wavedashing is a bigger commitment with more startup. Both are important tools for anyone to have in their arsenal.

Wavelanding
Similar to wavedashing, wavelanding is when you airdodge onto the ground to quickly land and act. Wavelanding has a ton of uses to tighten up platform movement, create unique combos, and recover quickly.

Platdropping
As mentioned briefly before, Rivals is very unique in that it allows you to platdrop out of a dash or run. This is a very important part of Rivals to understand, as it is not present in other platfighters. You can use this to your advantage to have tricky platdrop timings and use platforms to aid in whiff punishing. Certain characters like Ranno and Zetterburn get a significant amount of mileage out of platdrops, so making sure your plat movement is clean but not too overly complicated is crucial.

Jumping/Double Jumping
Every character has a jump from the ground, and at least one double jump they can use in the air. When double jumping, a small ring appears below the character to signify that they have used up their jump. Double jumps are not refreshed unless you touch the ground, so be sure to use them at the right time! Most characters have very straightforward jumps, but the air characters (Wrastor, Absa, Elliana and Pomme) all have a unique trait to it that needs to be accounted for whether you're playing as or against them.

Platboosting/Ledgeboosting
By platdropping or running off of a ledge during your initial dash, you will maintain the speed of your dash into the air, causing some characters to fly super far. While this tech isn't useful for every character, it is crucial for about half the cast to get some of their deadliest conversions.