Chapter 6: Reflection

Chapter 6: Reflection is the sixth chapter of Celeste. This chapter introduces Feathers which allow the player to fly for a short period of time, a new Badeline sequence and many more objects. It's also one of the most important chapters story-wise, telling a lot of information about the main protagonist.

Objects
The first sub-chapter, Start, contains two objects: Feathers and Trapped Feathers.

The second sub-chapter, Lake, contains six objects: Water, Semi-Smashable Walls, Angry Platforms, Crystals, Feathers, and Smashable Walls.

The third sub-chapter, Hollows, contains eleven objects: Water, Angry Platforms, Semi-Smashable Walls, Skull Binoculars, Diamonds, Feathers, Smashable Walls, Crystals, Falling Platforms, Bumpers, and Trapped Feathers. This sub-chapter also contains the B-Side Cassette Tape for the chapter.

The fourth sub-chapter, Reflection, contains four objects: Water, Crystals, Angry Platforms, Semi-Smashable Walls, and Bumpers.

More to come...

Crystal Heart
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Alternate Sides
The B-Side features similar mechanics to the A-Side, with the exception of some mechanics used in different ways (example: the feather form is used to collect Shields to open the door). It's a step-up in difficulty and it's considered the second hardest B-Side by many people.

The C-Side focuses generally on skillful bumper bounces, wallbouncing, moving the Kevin Block through a gauntlet of obstacles, and tricky timings in general. Due to its length, it doesn't feature a Badeline bossfight, however it's the only C-Side (not including Core's entrance) to have three instead of two checkpoints.

Quotes

 * Madeline: Let's climb out of here... together.
 * Badeline: Come close to me and I'll make you regret it!

Secret Developer Room
There is a secret room at the start of the "Reflection" subchapter. Under the elevator, a minimally hidden, reaching light suggests that there is a room above the elevator. After climbing in, the player should perform a wall bounce off the lower jut of the left wall onto the higher jut directly above it, then wall jump to the right jut, where the player will find a small enclosure. Here, the player should Wavedash to the left and time a dash upward between the crystals to find the secret entrance.

The room itself contains some of the developer's avatars and characters from TowerFall.

Speedrunning Record Progression
Clear (6A):

B-Side (6B): Note: Revolucion had, at various points, 5:10 and 4:58 as world records, but these videos were later deleted and so they do not appear in this list.

C-Side (6C):

Full Clear:

Major Strategies
Much like the Mirror Temple, the theoretically optimal route in Reflection is to grab the tape in 6A to unlock 6B, then play 6B. This is rarely done in runs -- while the respective WRs for 6A and 6B would, in a full game run, exit Reflection on a comparable pace, 6B is generally much more difficult and has longer rooms on average, meaning that mistakes are more likely to result in deaths and each death causes a greater time loss.

6A contains the lakeskip, in which one climbs a wall without the use of a Kevin block by starting underwater, then wallbouncing twice. This saves approximately 4 seconds.

Reflection is unique in that it contains no red berries, causing the difference between the 6A clear and full clear times to be smaller than it is for most other levels. Furthermore, while A-side hearts are generally well-hidden and one must go out of their way to obtain them, B-side and C-side hearts (as well as the Core A heart) are automatically obtained just by completing the level. In All Red Berries (ARB) runs, Core A is played for the obvious reason that it contains red berries (in contrast to any% where the run ends after The Summit). One cannot progress beyond the first three rooms of 8A without at least four hearts. Therefore, in addition to red berries, some hearts are collected as well, and it turns out the fastest A-side hearts are in the first four levels. Putting all this together, it means that ARB runs are free to avoid completing 6A because it has no berries in it and may instead play 6B. This earns a heart, which means that only three A-side hearts are required, meaning the player need not pick up the heart in Old Site or Celestial Resort, which saves approximately 20 seconds in either case. This means that, while it is very difficult to save time with the 6B route in any%, there is additional leeway in ARB, making the route far more viable there. However, it is still rarely done in either category.

Former top 10 player Revolucion was, at one point, ranked #6 with an any% run with the theoretically optimal route containing both 5B and 6B.

Trivia

 * When the game was still in early development, Reflection was supposed to be partially an underwater level. Unfortunately the idea was scrapped later, because the developers didn't find these sections enjoyable. The water currently in the game is mostly for aesthetic purposes apart from one short vertical swimming section.
 * The above statement was confirmed by Noel Berry on Celeste's official Discord Server.
 * Before Celeste's release, the fourth sub-chapter used to be longer and it featured several falling screens instead of one long vertical room. During the beta testing period of the game, a lot of players considered these rooms to be too hard compared to the rest of 6A, ending up with them being moved to 6B instead. An early version of that checkpoint can be seen during the developer stream of Celeste.