Celeste was the one game that I really wanted to play last year and never managed to find time for Thankfully, it was part of free games with Gold in the Microsoft store this month, and I binged a playthrough over the last several days.
It manages to capture some of the best things about video games, without feeling unbalanced or sacrificial to parts. I’m not going to pull any punches about how much I love what this game turned out to be. It’s a good video game on its own merit, but the polish, presentation and story elevate it beyond other platformers from the last decade. Celeste advances the envelope of interactive-storytelling.
Cons
The game was a bit short. I wished there was some additional content. maybe a section of challenge rooms where Mr. Oshiro intentionally sets up something for Madeline, or blunders an accident Madeline helps clean up again.
Some of the hazards were repetitive. The unique ones (like platforms that moved and slowly reset when you used your dash) were amazing, and the sections where multiple new hazards were combined were challenging. but the first level seemed a bit slow, and there are only so many ways to stylize spikes when they all have the exact same gameplay purpose, in a circular or squared form.
Gameplay
The platforming is a well-paced, tightly wound ecosystem that develops abilities, hazards, platforming, strawberries, and timing. It was a lovely balance of being punishingly difficult at times, while also remaining accessible and fun. There were times when I would go through a dozen screens in a flow, and others sections where I would spend 30 to 50 lives working past the same couple of obstacles.
Every mechanic was thought out in conjunction with other mechanics, and the story overall. The hazards are not just arbitrary ways to develop the gameplay, they’re integrated into the story (ie, the sludge is prominently found with Mr. Oshiro’s decrepit hotel). Alternating platforms are cued to the meter of the music and are only seen in rooms where you unlock B-Side tapes. It’s intuitive, develops naturally, and manages to keep you sitting until you beat ‘just one more obstacle’ despite the ability to save from any screen.
The dash isn’t just a normal double-jump feature with a subtle but crucial visual indicator via the colour of Madeline’s hair. The dash also pushes buttons, breaks hidden walls for strawberries, and moves angry blocks. You spring, fly, bubble, bounce, and catapult. The act of dashing isn’t just to move Madeline, it’s also to move obstacles. It becomes timing my dash in mid-air so the platform slides to catch me. it becomes the precious resource to account for. “How long has it been since I touched solid ground/reset my dash?” becomes the only important question for longer airborne sections.
Admittedly, there were three or four moments where I felt like I should have just barely lived, or landed. This was more prominent when climbing with a hazard on the top of the platform. I think the mechanic from climbing to jumping over the lip of a platform was somewhat a natural issue I didn’t grasp, and partially just a finicky part of the hit-boxes when clearing this specific context.
Another thing that deserves explicit praise is its assist mode. I’ve seen more games become more accessible to gamers with different audiovisual or physical disabilities in recent years. Marvel’s Spider-Man for PS4 has options for subtitles and auto-complete quick time events. Celeste is a difficult game, but the narrative, music, and overall experience of going through the game are things I wouldn’t want to see denied to anyone for an arbitrary reason. Assist mode is there. It’s not hidden or locked. The game explicitly mentions that the game is meant to be hard, and you should play it without assist mode first, but it also doesn’t shame any players from using it, or activating it, or turning it on and off as they need to. My playthrough didn’t need it, even if I was tempted. It is really refreshing to see how this was handled between the developers and the community though.
Presentation (Music, graphics, etc)
The 8-bit-graphics and Charlie Brown-esque voice over sounds make the game feel dated, but in an intentional way that ends up making it seem timeless. Instead of working towards cutting-edge platformer graphics (think Mirror’s Edge) that will date quickly, the aesthetic of the game intentionally moves towards anachronism. It feels nostalgic and friendly. Celeste wouldn’t work in another visual style.
The voice work being garbles of sound instead of speech further serves this feeling. Instead of listening to someone play Madeline or Theo or Mr. Oshiro, the speech-proxy sounds give a range of emotion and dynamic, while also giving the audience room to interpret or self-insert. The potential to dislike the characterization of the voice actor is entirely sidestepped while maintaining audio cues for danger, exhaustion, anger, frustration, or panic.
The music beats out everything except the story, however. So many other games feel the need to be fully-scored, bombastic, or specifically synced to give a sense of epic. Such resulting scores usually strike me as artificially paced. You either lose control of the character for a cutscene to perfectly time to the score — the crashes and crescendos — or you have the opposite issue where the score is too dynamic in too short of a time, which makes player initiated changes seem jarring. Celeste’s music fits perfectly with what the product is. It’s ambient. It’s got some synth complimenting the graphics. It has a sense of purpose, not only in the story and core gameplay, but also as a collectable, as you find and enjoy all of the B-side tapes hidden in their own unique mini puzzle rooms. The score feels integral to the gameplay and story, not an afterthought, and not a chore that they need to complete before release, like a lot of AAA games. It gives Madeline a sense of movement as she climbs, it gives a sense of urgency to boss battles, and it gives a sense of weight throughout.
The Story
I was not ready for the trip that was Celeste’s narrative. I just beat the game today and haven’t had time for a second run to enjoy the little easter-eggs or moments of foreshadowing. I haven’t read other theories as to secret plotlines behind secondary characters. I’m sure these elements exist. At face value, Celeste is a story told through a video game. Everything else is just quality.
Please note, I spoil the whole story below. You’ve heard me praise this story enough. please experience it for yourself if you want, before you read on. Thank u, next.
Madeline is a redheaded, parka-clad protagonist who encounters a fellow adventurer, an old woman, a birb, a ghost, and her inner demon. And that’s the whole cast. She endeavors to climb Celeste mountain for some non-explicit reason. And in terms of literal actions and this is the story. She accomplishes this goal, albeit with complications involving a hotel, a temple, and a fall. But to say Celeste is a story of a mountain climber is to oversimply in the same way as saying World War II was a tussle.
Fairly early on, you’re told how Celeste mountain is somewhat magical. And the story uses this as the crux to develop itself. Madeline isn’t just some blank Mario with which to jump and climb and dash and die. She’s anxious. She’s somewhat self-loathing. She’s conflicted — and not just about the casual protagonist issues of win/meet x condition/fetch item/shoot terrorist. Her fears and conflicts are too complex for her to state simply, or even state at all for most of the game. She’s relatable, and you can’t help but feel empathy, if not sympathy.
To tell a similar story of a character dealing with their own problems or self-image or doubts through a live-action movie, or another medium or style of game seems ridiculous. They’d get all tangled up in casting and CGI budgets or beauty, microtransactions, customization, or something else. Celeste is able to condense its perspective of the human condition into something more. Madeline is able to literally fight this other, negative/”worse” (I hesitate to use the term)/darker side of herself. And she doesn’t win, in a simple sense. It’s not winning or losing; it’s growing, and developing, and forgiving. The act of climbing Celeste mountain serves as both another layer to and the culmination of her journey with herself.
Conclusion
Celeste is simply great. It’s a didactic interactive story about how you handle the parts of yourself that are conflicting, or that you may not love as much as you should or could. You can find all the B-side tapes and strawberries. You can speedrun it. You can just enjoy the experience of the story, or the platforming on their own merits. But Celeste isn’t just a good story, or a thoughtful platforming ecosystem, or a collectable hunt. it’s all of these things, which is really just kind of boggling. Add on an assist mode/accessibility mode, a soundtrack that SLAPS, a sense of humor, and obvious love and care, and you have something that really surprised me.
Celeste isn’t an 80–100 hours, but I can see it having that much value if you want to find everything that it has to offer. Celeste isn’t the next generation of graphics or gameplay. It isn’t doing anything that the world hasn’t seen before, but it does a lot of things, and it does them all so well. Celeste is exactly what it was intended to be.
