I think there's a reason that most 3D platformers are not all about precision platforming, and tend to be more about the exploration and discovery of an interesting 3D space. There are no doubt games that can tow that line and deliver on both, but they're few and far between.

For Celeste's first 3D outting I don't think that line is towed completely successfully, but what was delivered here is admirable nonetheless. Exploring the level on offer here and learning the ins and outs of the movement, which hews closer to the original Celeste than I expected, was delightful through and through. There are a handful of bursts of precision platforming that demand perfection, but with the generous checkpointing and fast respawns that you'd expect, they don't break up the collect-a-thon-esque flow too much. I think the cracks really begin to show in the hidden cassette tape stages where you're presented with a much more demanding platforming challenge backdropped by a black void evocative of Mario Sunshine. I think these sections feel the most like the precision platforming of the original game translated directly to 3D, and it feels a bit incongruous. Having to quickly move the camera as you dart from platform to platform adds an extra element that really does not compliment this style of platforming.

I think despite those handful of sections though this is a really tight, solid little game that I can see myself returning to on a whim just to soak in the vibes and feel the movement a bit, because it is smooth as hell and there aren't many 3D platformers that clear that bar.

Played on Switch Pro Controller because for some reason the keyboard control scheme is total crap. Celeste 64 is a decent translation of Celeste's gameplay into a 3D space with a surprising amount of exploration and discovery in such a small platforming playground. Despite the 64 in the name, the game is actually designed more similarly to a Mario Odyssey kingdom... with some Mario Sunshine PTSD cassette levels thrown in.

I can't tell whether the devs of this game thoroughly misunderstood what makes 3D platformers fun, or thoroughly understood what makes some 3D platformers shit. That might actually be a compliment? I hated playing it and for that reason I had a great time playing it. Unlike Celeste, not a single death in Celeste 64 will be your fault. It'll all be because of that pesky camera. Or the depth perception. But in some sick twisted way, that is also kind of its appeal? I think it's stockholm syndrome please save me from this polygonal hell

This team consistently knows how to deliver a delightful surprise, and their level design sensibilities are as impeccable as ever. There's such an excellent push and pull to the challenges and gauntlets to get some of the berries, where you wonder if it's possible, try again and again to perfect your execution, and even though it's stressful in the moment, it feels so good to succeed, and you can't help but look back on it fondly.

I wonder if they'd ever consider making a more full-fledged 3D game in any genre...

If you liked Celeste or you liked N64 platformers (or both), then I recommend you check it out. Its short, cute, and a lot of fun.

First thing in this game's favor: it's free! This was a gift from the Celeste team honoring the game's anniversary and you can really feel the original team in this game. All the mechanics from the original game are here but with a 3D platformer spin. The challenges get progressively more difficult, but nothing here is insanely hard. If I can beat it in 3 hours, anyone can.

Second, its a cute game. While not much of a story, the bits that are there are enjoyable and bring you back to the old Celeste world. A few familiar faces pop up throughout and each time its a real joy.

But (and of course there is a but) this is still probably only a 3 out of 5 game overall. As far as free games made over a week or two - yeah it's a five. This is a great game hitting exactly the beats it wants too in exactly the ways it intended. But this is also a very niche game for a niche audience and it does struggle at parts. For instance, the camera can be a real pain. I'd also hoped for a few more story beats, I don't think it would have been too hard to add in a few more characters from the game for you to meet with and slowly progress the story to the ending. Finally, I didn't really like the way it "ends". The goal isn't clear at all and when I got to the ending I didn't even realize it. I think they could have advertised a path or a purpose a bit more clearly.

Still, what a great cute game that I really enjoyed. Thank you Celeste team for this!

One of the main reasons I actually played through the original Celeste last weekend was because I had heard of this little game’s release and was really interested to try it (but didn’t want to just skip the original game, particularly when I already owned it XD). I’m a sucker for 3D platformers, and a free one that was getting rave reviews was obviously too good a prospect to simply ignore. It took me about dead-on an hour and a half to get all 30 strawberries and reach the place where this game’s equivalent of credits are without using any guides using my Xbone controller (and died 149 times in the process <w>).

This is very much a bite-sized freebie of a game rather than a full-fledged game, and it’s got a similarly bite-sized story to go with it. It’s been a good few years since Madeline climbed Mt. Celeste, but she’s paying a visit back there to meet up with old friends and work through anxieties she’s going through now that she’s taken on a new major challenge in her life. There’s not much more to it than that to say outside of literally relaying all of the game’s dialogue, really x3. Regardless, for fans of the original game and its story, it’s a very cool epilogue and it’s fun to see old faces again and what they’re gotten up to in the time since the original game ended.

Mechanically, that’s what this game is all about. As a way to celebrate the game’s sixth anniversary, the dev team threw this together in “a week(ish)”. What we have as the end product is the second world of Celeste reimagined as something akin to a Super Mario Odyssey level, with 30 different strawberries (acting as our moon-like collectible) scattered throughout the stage to try your hand at collecting. There are cassette tapes here and there as well, though instead of leading to whole new versions of stages, the B-sides of the original Celeste, here they lead to little self-contained platforming challenges (much like Mario Odyssey and Mario Sunshine do with their Cappy-less and Fludd-less challenges), and if you want all 30 strawberries, the game’s biggest challenges lie in those tape dimensions.

Celeste’s main mechanics are just about all here as much as they can be. While more technical things like wave dashing and wall bouncing are (mercifully) left out, Madeline absolutely has her jumping and dashing to aid her in this, and it translates very oddly to 3D. Now they made this in a week, so I’m not gonna be too harsh on it for not being the most polished thing in the world, but even still, it really takes some getting used to for how this game controls compared to the original game (or most 3D platformers, for that matter). Your movement is VERY heavily dependent on where the camera is facing compared to most games because of the relatively 360-degree movement you have (between your normal movement and your directional dashes), and getting used to your turning circle as well as just how generous your dashes can be are the bulk of the learning curve, so far as I experienced.

I actually originally found the game really frustrating, and I was going to call it quits with less than 10 strawberries as soon as I’d found the credits, but I stuck with it a little longer out of curiosity and found myself enjoying it more and more as I got my sea legs better established. I’m not sure you could really turn this into a larger game, at least in its current form. Compared to how much the original Celeste was a very “easy to learn, hard to master” kind of experience in 2D, its 3D iteration here has much more of a vibe of “starts hard, gets harder”. That’s not to say that this game is bad for being hard, but it’s likely going to be off-putting to even seasoned 3D platform fans with just how mean its level design can feel at times.

A lot of Celeste 64 involves navigating 3D spaces with little in the way of markers around you to help indicate where you are in physical space. You mercifully have a marker-line underneath you to help you platform in these harder bits, but even with that, the learning curve to go from awful to decent is a steep one. Again, it’s a game they made in a week(ish), so I’m not gonna say it’s inexcusable that it’s so unpolished, but the game we have is the game we have, and whether or not you’re going to actually enjoy the design here is going to depend at least a bit on how willing you are to put up with learning the unintuitive ways this game expects you to find your way around its world.

The aesthetics are absolutely delightful. The original Celeste already had a lot of clear inspiration from Mario games (both 2D and 3D) in its gameplay design as well as its aesthetic direction, but this game makes that even more clear for anyone who was somehow still in doubt about such things by the nature of the game’s title XD. The graphics do a great job of replicating the feel of old N64 graphics (with the character models in particular being very fun versions of the characters we knew so well in 2D from the original). The music also leans very hard into paying homage to Mario 64, going so far as to even mimic its sound font for the handful of tracks in this game (all of which are really good, especially given the brief time in which they were written).

Verdict: Recommended. This is a game that’s a bit too hard to recommend to everyone like I could with the original Celeste, but it’s still really fun! It’s short and it’s completely free, so the barrier to entry is incredibly low as long as you’ve got a controller to play it with. If you’re a fan of 3D platformers, especially if you enjoyed the original Celeste, this is absolutely one you don’t wanna miss out on as long as you don’t mind a bit of a challenge.