Celeste is an amazing platformer that is both very difficult and also very forgiving, boasting an amazing assist mode that allows players to make the game easier for themselves if it is too tough. Set on a mountain comprised of a few different locales, you jump and air-dash around various mechanics, collecting strawberries and finding secrets that unlock much harder levels. I had a great time going through the campaign, and might try to clear up everything else that I missed. If you haven’t played Celeste, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Starting with a light story about Madeline, trying to climb a mountain, you quickly embark into Celeste’s core mechanics. You can jump, grab on walls (and climb them up and down for a short while before you run out of stamina), walljump and dash in the air. You have one dash at first, but after a while you get another one, and these replenish when you land on something (or hit an item like a trampoline or a bubble or the like). The levels are semi-straightforward, with a critical path and other branches that will usually lead to harder challenges that end in collectibles. One of my few issues with the game is that while playing it is a blast and exploring is real fun, sometimes you go through some one-way passages on the main path while trying to find secrets, so I somehow wish that what is a ‘side area’ and what is a ‘main area’ was more well defined.
Collectibles range from strawberries - you need to grab them and then go back to safety to collect them - that come in normal and winged versions (these just leave the screen if you air-dash), cassette tapes that unlock “B Side” versions of levels (these are much harder), gems and really rare hearts. Each level introduces new mechanics; you’ll have zones of starry blackness where you can only pass by dashing, blobs of red shadow that kill you and appear as you touch certain surfaces, blocks with arrows that move in a specific direction (some of them can be controlled a bit), bubbles that shoot you around, and more.
There are also enemies as well (or boss sequences, in some cases) where you have to avoid a clone of yourself, dodge strange monsters, avoid a ghost or hit someone shooting lasers at you. All the while you are checkpointed at the start of every screen and repeated deaths have no consequences. You unlock a Pico-8 version of the game at some point and while it is neat, it shares a small frustration I have with the B-Side levels is that you cannot save your progress through them, which means that if you don’t have a large-ish chunk of time to spend on the game, starting one of these will only end in futile frustration. But don’t let that stop you, you just have to commit to these levels.
I had a great time with Celeste! I might even continue playing it now that the main story is over, trying to get all the B-sides, complete them, beat Pico-8 mode, and all that. It plays great, it looks great, the music is great and the message is great, what is there not to like?
