Chapter 5: Mirror Temple

Chapter 5: Mirror Temple is the fifth chapter of Celeste. It takes place in an ancient temple that contains a mysterious power coming from the mountain. It also introduces the player to a variety of new mechanics.

Objects
The first sub-chapter, Start, contains twelve objects: Swap Blocks, Red Bubbles, Blue Torches, Dash Switches, Temple Gates, Crystals, Springs, Spikes, Diamonds, Blades, Keys, and Locks.

The second sub-chapter, Depths, contains the following objects: Blue Torches, Yellow Torches, Red Bubbles, Crystals, Dash Switches, Temple Gates, Swap Blocks, Springs, Skull Binoculars, [more to come...] This sub-chapter also includes the chapter's B-Side Cassette Tape.

Crystal Heart
🇨🇱

Alternative Sides
The B-Side is split into three parts: Central Chamber, Through The Mirror and Mix Master. It features the song Mirror Magic Mix by 2 Mello. The section order is very similar, however, the search and puzzle parts are much shorter than in the original chapter.

The C-Side features a large number of Swap Blocks and Red Bubbles. While it lacks the puzzle sections, it focuses solely on timings and techniques such as Wall Bounces.

Seeker Mini-game
About halfway through the chapter, the player is temporarily put in control of a Seeker, allowing the player to move freely in two dimensions and dash to break Seeker Barriers. This continues until the player finds Madeline and touches her, ending the mini-game and allowing the player to resume control of Madeline as usual.

Quotes
More to come...

Speedrunning Record Progression
Clear (5A):

Note: Revolucion had 4:20 as a world record at some point, but the video appears to have been taken down, so it is not known when the run happened and it is therefore not included in the table.

B-Side (5B):

C-Side (5C):

Full Clear:

Major Strategies
Temple A includes the Depths Cornerboost, a very visually impressive strat which involves hypering off a zip block to obtain a great rightwards velocity, bunnyhopping off a platform, then performing an upwards ultra into a diagonal cornerboost to maintain the momentum into the next room, allowing the zip block in that room to be skipped entirely. It also contains some skips such as searchskip and double bubble skip which are obsolete in any% and are now mainly used in All Red Berries, All Chapters and 5A IL runs.

The Mirror Temple is of particular interest because of its implications for the any% route. Firstly, completing a level's B-Side will unlock the following level, just as completing the level's A-side does. In 5A, the tape room is reasonably close to the beginning, and 5B is significantly shorter than 5A. The optimal route is, therefore, to obtain the tape in 5A to unlock 5B, quit out of the level, then complete 5B. Mirror Temple is not unique in this regards; this is also true of Reflection, but is generally not done there for a number of reasons.

5B also contains the zero-key skip, which avoids picking up either of the two keys in the level and which saves approximately 19 seconds over skipping only one key and which is required for the route to save time. This requires traversing a corridor of spikes. For a time, a pixel-perfect cornerboost was used to jump through it. This is extremely difficult and a failure causes 12 seconds to be lost, so, despite the possible gains, very few players attempted the route due to the incredibly high risk involved. However, DemoJameson eventually found an alternative version of zero-key skip which is slightly slower but far more consistent. In this new method, a bubsdrop -- previously believed to be useless -- is used to exit and re-enter the screen using an exit intended to be one-way, then a suicide is performed, which causes Madeline to respawn-warp past the spike corridor. Once this was discovered, the 5B route finally became widely used.

Trivia

 * A part of the In The Mirror song which plays during the rescue section, contains a hidden message which can be heard when the player uses a program to play the song reversed. If listening carefully, breathing noises and a short unsettling monologue can be heard which is confirmed to be Lena Raine talking about her fears and personal struggles, ending with quiet sobbing noises. It most likely also refers to Madeline's depression and anxiety that can be noticed during her journey.
 * During the short monologue the following words can be heard:


 * In the chapter's B-side, a secret island resembling the Golden Ridge can be found by going left with the first red orb.