Celeste

The game's logo, depicting Celeste Mountain

Celeste is a critically acclaimed side-scrolling platform game created by Matt Makes Games Inc. The game was released on January 25, 2018, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, and Linux. The game follows a young woman named Madeline as she climbs the titular Celeste Mountain, facing opposition from both the mountain's natural obstacles and from within herself.

Gameplay

Celeste's gameplay features fast and tight controls along a series of challenging platforming sublevels that make up a larger Chapter. It follows the simple to learn and hard to master controls that are a staple of its genre, and gameplay has often been compared to others, like Super Meat Boy.

The Prologue introduces players to the basic controls, such as jumping and the ability to climb walls. The dash—one of the main movement options in the game—is gifted to the player at the end of the level, seemingly by the Bird. This dash is the core mechanic of Celeste's gameplay, giving the player short burst forward in the direction that the player is holding. It can only be used a limited number of times, and must be refreshed before dashing again. The status of the player's available dashes is indicated by Madeline's hair colour. Refreshing the dash is done in a multitude of ways, but the main actions include touching the ground, collecting stamina crystals and screen transitions.

The sublevels, and by extension the game's Chapters, get progressively harder as more mechanics and obstacles are introduced, and the use of these elements merge and flow together the closer the player gets to the summit. Towards the endgame, Celeste introduces many more moves that use various combinations of the basic three moves (jumping, climbing, and dashing) in tandem; these techniques are explored in detail on the Moves page.

Collectables

Throughout the game, the player is able to collect items that can affect Madeline's journey, unlocking new endings, new stages, or simply acting as a challenge. The number of collected strawberries of any variety—normal, Winged, or Golden—will change the ending, with several different endings available.

Strawberries

A Strawberry

The most notable collectables of Celeste, appearing in every chapter (except Chapter 6 and Chapter 9). They usually appear in secret rooms or surrounded by traps, requiring a higher level of skill than would normally be required for the rest of the level in order to obtain these strawberries. Once a strawberry is touched, it will follow the player until the player either dies (resetting the strawberry's position) or lands on solid ground (allowing the player to collect it).

Winged Strawberry

Winged Strawberry's sprite

A variant of the normal strawberry, these fly upward out of the screen when the player performs a dash. In order to collect these strawberries, the player must either use a path through the level that does not require dashing or touch the strawberry while it's flying upwards.

B-Side Cassette Tape

Cassette Tape

B-Side Cassette Tapes are rare collectables, with one appearing per chapter (Except chapter 9). The screens that B-Side Cassette Tapes appear in can be determined by the Alternating Platforms that appear in them but nowhere else in the normal game, and the 8-bit remix of the chapter's music that plays in the background in these rooms. Upon collecting a B-Side Cassette Tape, the B-Side of that chapter will be unlocked for the player to access (hence the name).

Crystal Hearts

Crystal Hearts are collectables that appear throughout the game. These are used to unlock Chapter 8 and its alternate sides, as well as the 4th to 9th sub-chapters of Chapter 9. They come in three colours: blue for normal sides, red for B-sides and yellow for C-sides. While the blue Crystal Hearts are hidden as secrets in normal sides (a guide on how to collect them can be found here), red and yellow Crystal Hearts are found by completing the B-sides and C-sides, respectively. The number of Hearts, regardless of colour, needed to unlock Chapter 8 are:

• A-side: at least 4 Crystal Hearts.
• B-side: 15 Crystal Hearts, which means that the player will have to get all of the Blue Crystal Hearts, as well as all 7 Red Crystal Hearts from previous B-sides.
• C-side: 23 Crystal Hearts, which means that the player will have to get all of the other Crystal Hearts to get the last one.

The 4th to 9th sub-chapters of Chapter 9 requires 15 Crystal Hearts to unlock.

Golden Strawberry

Golden Strawberry's sprite

A variant of the normal strawberry, these strawberries are golden and appear, after you have finished Chapter 8's B-Side. Golden strawberries will appear at the start of every chapter, and once one is touched, will follow the player through the entire chapter, until the end of the chapter or when the player collects a Crystal Heart at the end of a B-side or C-side. Unlike normal strawberries, Golden Strawberries will reset if the player dies, meaning that a Golden Strawberry can only be collected if the chapter that the Golden Strawberry is found in is finished without the player dying even once.

Winged Golden Strawberry

Winged Golden Berry

The winged golden strawberry is located at the end of Chapter 1, and can only be obtained if the player doesn't dash at all during Chapter 1, unless the player dies before leaving the room. Because of this, the player must take advantage of wall-hops, wall-jumping off small gaps, and neutral- jumping off walls to gain height, in order to obtain the winged golden strawberry.

Moon Berry

The moon berry is another variant of the normal strawberry that is only found in the last sub-chapter of Chapter 9. It is extremely difficult to obtain, but it unlocks the "Wow" achievement upon collection.

Chapters

• Prologue
• Chapter 1: Forsaken City
• Chapter 2: Old Site
• Chapter 3: Celestial Resort
• Chapter 4: Golden Ridge
• Chapter 5: Mirror Temple
• Chapter 6: Reflection
• Chapter 7: The Summit
• Epilogue
• Chapter 8: Core
• Chapter 9: Farewell

Development

The original Celeste (now called Celeste Classic and appearing as a mini-game in the full Celeste game) was developed in Pico-8 by Noel Berry and Matt Thorson for a game jam over the course of 4 days. This game had 30 segments, which each had one strawberry to collect. The game now referred to as Celeste was first playable at PAX West 2016, and the game itself was released January 25, 2018.

In December 2018, Thorson officially announced that Celeste would get a set of "farewell levels", which would be ready in early 2019. In January 2019, Thorson stated the new levels would consist of a single chapter with no alternate sides or strawberries. In April 2019, Thorson revealed that the chapter would be called Farewell, and would be a free DLC update on all platforms. In May 2019, Berry added that the chapter has something to do with the Bird, but did not add further details.

Reception

Celeste garnered positive reception from multiple review studios. IGN, the game's first reviewer, gave the game a 10/10, Polygon rated Celeste an 8/10, and the current standing on Metacritic is averaged 91% across its platforms, with an average user score of 7.3/10. Celeste also was nominated for Game of the Year, next to God of War (the winner), Spider-Man, Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, and Monster Hunter World.

Most notably though, this game has been received as though it was a love-letter to speedrunners. It became a common appearance at GDQ quite quickly, having 4 runs between 3 GDQs (two TAS, two human). On speedrun.com, this game often sits in the top ten most active speed games. (Note: As of writing this, Celeste currently has the most active players on all of Speedrun.com

Many people who have played this game have noted that it is a fantastic analogue for depression and anxiety. Jirard Khalil (host of the Completionist) stated, "It's not the first video game about mental health, [and it's] not the first to use a mountain as a metaphor for one's personal struggles, but that doesn't matter because Celeste just knocks it right out of the park. [...] Now obviously, no two people are going to have the exact same experience when it comes to mental illness, [...] but it absolutely nails the feeling of trying to take care of your own mental and emotional health." It can be trusted that this game helped a lot of people. Many people (including myself, breaking essay rules) have either been helped or positively impacted by this game, which is a tell that a game is an important one.

Trivia

• Noel Berry has stated that the name of the setting was chosen when Berry googled British Columbian mountains; the team chose Mount Celeste as they liked the name of it, despite not knowing much about the mountain at the time.