I bought a Switch recently, partially to play the exclusives, but mostly as a convenient way to portably catch up on all of the 8th gen indies I skipped out on. Celeste was $10 for the Winter Sale and I decided that the critical reception was too strong to not take the plunge. While I definitely have my grievances with the title, a majority lie with my own skill level, and I respect the hell out of the devs for creating such a finely-tuned experience.
The crux of the game is jumping, dashing, and climbing through cleverly designed rooms of challenges, with optional difficulty increases by way of the strawberry collectables. Touching anything dangerous is instant death, but you respawn at the beginning of each room as quickly as you went out. This creates a fast-paced, player-friendly environment to try riskier things in a way where you aren't punished for dying. The rooms navigate into each other in a map-like way, giving an overall stag more cohesiveness than something like Super Meat Boy, where all challenges are divorced from one another. The map-structure is cool because sometimes a room may present two different challenges depending on the direction traveled.
There are also something like a dozen mechanics that increase the "vocabulary" of the level design to make it both more interesting and more difficult to traverse. There are mechanical blocks that shoot off in a direction when you grab them, space-looking blocks that you have to dash through and preserve your momentum, bubbles that temporarily push you in a direction until you dash out of them, blocks that you kind of steer while grabbing onto them as they float around, animate Thwomp looking things that speed off in the direction you dash into them from, and the feather, which allows you to temporarily fly in any direction and navigate tricky spike mazes. It's all fucking nonsense and some of the setups really, really push your abilities - not only to figure out how to get through the room, but then to execute your plan as well. Little hard-to-miss wrinkles get thrown in that cause you to rethink your strategies, and you slowly master the room on the way to beating it. It's really rewarding and feels set up like a classroom to teach you how to improve at the game.
For those who like a challenge, the difficulty gets pushed up to crazy heights on the B- and C-Sides for each level, which feature remixed music and challenge rooms. While I haven't personally completed all of them, some were occasionally so difficult that I would spent upwards of 10 minutes just practicing a room until I miraculously broke through and pulled it off. Actually getting through the whole thing feels fantastic. I will say, though, that I didn't really appreciate the decision to make the B-Sides mirror the length of the original levels, because some are much longer than others, and makes the challenge stages feel like a war of attrition at times. At a lot of points, I had felt like I'd already earned the reward of the level coming to an end. This is a personal note, though, because personally I like to take on high-stress challenges in bite-sized chunks - others may feel differently, so I can't call it a firm critique. In all, the gameplay is among the most polished platformers I can remember playing in my life. Matt gets just about the most you could ever hope to out of the small cast of mechanics he employs, and some of the late-game setups will have you grinning in a "that bastard" sort of way.
Aesthetically, I applaud the choice to embrace such an odd palette - Celeste is filled with purples, oranges, yellows, teal, and, of course, the ever-present auburn of Madeline's hair centering it all. Some of the sunset-themed stages look completely fantastic and pretty unique as a result. The pixel art is just chunky enough to give the animation some ambiguity and heft, and it looks pretty great everywhere. Some may lament the non-pixelated text boxes and portraits as well as the low-poly 3D main menu, but overall I consider those unimportant because all three styles capture the main art direction well. It was quite cool to see some major landmarks from the 2D stages on the 3D mountain model after I'd overcome them. The music is fun and energetic, especially in the final stage of the game, but personally I'd put it in the "good, not great" category for some missteps - notably the Chapter 4 B-Side which was so grating and repetitive I had to turn it off. The sound design is great, and it helps you figure out timing on later, more complex areas by slowly figuring out what a successful run would sound like... and that's powerful stuff. It really weaves well into the internally-focused structure of the gameplay.
I know the narrative is somewhat controversial, and I'll be upfront and say that I didn't care for it. Madeline herself is the star of the show and is very likable for her short temper and generally introverted personality - since you control her, it's easier to fit into her shoes even during her low points. She's honest about her feelings, and seeing her slowly overcome her emotional burdens is gratifying and a strong point of player motivation. However, the game's insistence on using flatter characters to build Madeline up through her arc really detracts from the overall narrative. Theo is supposed to be her fun, pseudo-foil sidekick that she opens up to, but he comes across as self-absorbed and frankly unhelpful to Madeline the entire way. The player can't personally piece together Madeline's vulnerability, we have to listen to her phone call with an ex to reveal that to us. They can't individually diagnose her obvious stubbornness, it has to be revealed to them through a sequence where she tries to save a rude ghost from... something? The execution on basically everything is poor except for the net outcome of the protagonist herself. Thankfully, it's not that large a part of the game overall, so it doesn't detract too much, but it does prevent full unity from the player and the game. I think if you trim the character fat to just the old woman, more frequent calls to home, and the "internal" monologues with her darker side, you're gold. Honestly, for a game about overcoming anxiety and loneliness, Madeline doesn't get many narrative moments to herself, either. I think the plot could really welcomed the same laser-focus present in the rest of the experience.
In all, it's very difficult for me to not recommend Celeste, despite its shortcomings, because the base game is just so fundamentally sound. If you have basically any interest in platformers, this is a must-play. If you have no previous experience with them but want a starting point, well I can't really dissuade you from Celeste either, for as difficult as it becomes, it's very manageable and teaches you the ropes organically. This is a great stepping stone for Matt Makes Games and I hope their next project gets closer to the potential Celeste reveals.
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I didn’t really know what to expect going into Celeste other than the fact that many critics and Youtubers were really losing their shit over this game. Celeste stars Madeline (or a girl with the name of your choosing) who suffers with anxiety and depression (as is seemingly required for indie game protagonists these days). The game starts off with Madeline arriving at Mount Celeste somewhere in Canada; a mysterious mountain supposedly possessing some kind of magic for which Madeline wishes to scale for reasons not immediately apparent to her or the player. Throughout the journey she meets a few interesting characters like a friendly adventurer by the name of Theo or a ghostly hotel owner named Mr. Oshiro. The Mountain also brings out a darker doppelganger of Madeline who embodies the negative emotions buried deep within her and the two must learn to deal with each other.
As far as platformers go this game feels a lot like Super Meat Boy in terms of it’s fast mechanics and trail’n’error gameplay. There’s a wall climbing feature paired with a stamina gauge and a dashing mechanic that only recharges when you touch the ground or touch special items in midair. That’s about it… The rest of the game’s platforming design rests in the hands of each level’s hazards and gimmicks. I like the simpler approach to the game’s mechanics but wish there was more variety it the challenges presented to you in each level. Since the bulk of these levels are pretty long these slight variations of moving platforms and enemies do begin to feel a bit repetitive after a while. But the mechanics themselves feel so smooth and the difficulty is so tastefully hard that you’ll want to push through to the end of each level.
There are some optional challenges in the game like collecting the many hard to reach strawberries scattered throughout each level, these are where the game’s best challenges arise from yet unfortunately collecting strawberries does nothing but allot you bragging rights… There are cassette tapes you can unlock which gives you access to more challenging versions of each level (plus remixed music), and there are crystal hearts which are tricky to find but allow you to access the game’s final chapter. There’s also a mini arcade game you can uncover called the PICO-8 that’s an entirely separate game in and of itself that basically acts as a more simplistic version of Celeste. The game sports a solid retro art style that looks as though it could have been found on a GameBoy Advance title, and the soundtrack is also fairly well executed if not a bit derivative of other retro indie game soundtracks.
Overall this is a really solid platformer with a more heart felt narrative, a satisfying sense of challenge, and consistently good level design. I wish the challenges in each level were a little more creative, or that there was more of a sense of accomplishment with collecting the game’s many strawberries. I don’t really know that this game pushes the envelope much in comparison to the many other retro platformers out there but it’s still a fun diversion that’ll really test the stones of gamers. It’s also a tad bit expensive for what it is but I think it’s worth it for people who really dig these types of games.
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Probably the best twitchy-and-difficult platformer I've played and includes a great soundtrack and surprisingly heartwarming story. I can imagine this being a polarizing game since it focuses on maximizing a specific, frustratingly difficult gameplay but if you love Super Meat Boy-esq games, you'll love this.
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Madeline is trans but the game is so vague about it that it's hard to even know until someone points it out, especially since the biggest hint is at the end of farewell and I was beat to shit after finally finishing it lol. Her being trans is almost completely irrelevant to the rest of the game's story though, but I think its subtlety is pretty brilliant tbh
finally gonna go through this after many attempts and failing. honestly just don’t think i’m a fan of games that are intentionally trying to upset every step of the road. not sure it’s really what i look for especially with my own personal issues with easily getting frustrated with myself lol
this is the type of game i should love. I've tried playing this about 3 times because it looks and sounds beautiful but i always fall off around world 3.
Just got to the point in Farewell where you have to backtrack and get all the hearts... I haven't been this disappointed in a game in a long time. The hearts aren't even fun to find.