The Unearthly Beauty of Celeste’s UX

UX Case Study — designing products that matter

I took so many screenshots as if I were reading a highly quotable book

A great digital product is simply described in 3 words: functional, beautiful and Meaningful.

Many video games are great in matters of graphics, exciting music and logic. But few offer more benefit than the simple pleasure of escaping the yuckiness of everyday life. Celeste on the other hand has a much higher purpose: overcoming depression.

And for an anxious person who is also a designer; the game played on my withered heart strings.

First, Set the Mood: Designing Depression 😈

The level of empathy in the game is unbelievable. It takes someone who truly knows what anxiety and depression feel like to be able to portray it as it has been portrayed in Celeste.

The game fights mental illness using music, perfectly designed challenges and simple controls. The player takes the character of Madeline; a sweet kind girl who decides to climb the eerie mount Celeste to battle her feelings of self doubt and occasional panic attacks which are portrayed as her evil doppelgänger; a darker version of Madeline that sounds very much like one’s thoughts during a bout of anxiety:

Music: Communicate, Calm & Excite

Oh the music…oh that sublime soundtrack!

Screens in Celeste have different music scores that mirror Madeline’s mental state at that time in the story. Madeline’s actions change music. It gives you indication whether a direction is the right one to go.

It’s quite beautiful; on boss fights and fast paced screens the music gets an exciting beat that pumps you to rise to the challenge. On particularly tough screens the music is so calming it really soothes the player as they try and die, and die again, and again as they struggle to beat the tough-as-nails challenges…I literally died once every 3–4 seconds on some screens.

Meticulous Challenge Design, Simple Controls and multiple user level empathy

Now to be honest, while I was learning the game in the first boss fight I was completely dumbstruck by how hard it was to complete some screens in a game with such simple controls!

You can only run, jump, dash and wall climb. But those simple actions had to be performed in long, perfectly timed sequences to be able to reach safety. I would stare at a strawberry placed in a seemingly impossible to reach place and think: what sadistic person decided to put that over there and how on earth do I get it?!

Sense of achievement

But: the game actually tells you that while it’s nice to collect those precious strawberries, they are only good to impress your friends. Meaning: don’t bust an artery trying to get them.

And when I could actually get a strawberry after probably 30 trials, I would feel a sense of achievement quite disproportionate to something as simple as getting a collectible in a video game 😅

Friends ❤

It’s important (and genius) that game designers did not neglect the critical part of friends as a support network when fighting depression. They introduce Theo, a cute character who doesn’t really know where to go with his life so he also decides to climb the mountain. He teaches Madeline a technique to overcome panic attacks and even gets to help her in the SCARY mirror temple, even though he gets trapped in a crystal and Madeline ends up carrying him out while fighting monsters.

Pros are the ones who conquer B-sides

Another beautiful part of the game design is the ability to complete a B-Side: a nightmare inducing hard version of a certain level. This is rewarding to players with higher skills and encouraging to newbie players to upskill and explore that new unknown territory.

It took me 3000+ deaths to finally conquer the game. But I didn’t give up. Yep, I am as proud as Madeline should be.

But some gamers are total pros at this. Like this one:

Then, Beat Depression

In a beautiful manner, the game shows Madeline’s struggle with anxiety and depression by going through the normal steps it takes a person to overcome depression:

1. Deny it & Run: when Madeline is forced to run from her evil self (and multiple copies of her to boot).

2. Face it & try to understand it: when the old lady advises Madeline to talk to her bad side and see what her problem is, Madeline seeks her in the famous “part of me” chase (that one gave me such trouble! you can barely touch a surface you must think and react so fast. Very unlike me).

3. Accept it and learn to live with it: at the end of the chase, Madeline makes peace with her depression. She accepts it as a part of her and agrees to work together from that point onwards.

You level UP after that! and can now double dash without touching a surface or needing a diamond to refresh your dash. Which is awesome because the toughest part yet is coming up and it requires ALL YOUR SKILLs…

Finally, Victory

You now need to climb to the summit with the help of Madeline’s bad side. This part made me almost cry, throw the controller and never touch my Nintendo again. I love my Nintendo more than I love most people so this is quite serious.

So I had to navigate some very difficult terrain for someone with slow thinking and slower reflexes. But in the end I reached the top, and let me tell you: the tremendous sense of achievement I got then has one of two possible explanations:

1. the game designers are geniuses and incredible UX designers (part therapists as well) to be able to invoke this amazing feeling with the simple feat of beating a video game.
2. I have serious issues to feel good about something as silly as beating a video game :/

But I think it’s number one this time ;)

I hope you enjoyed this post even though it’s quite different! Until the next post. Lots of Love! #keepdesigning and..

Breathe