One of the tightest and most kinesthetically satisfying 2d platformers I've ever played. Stellar music and artwork an utter joy to experience. Celeste has just the right amount of challenge: equal parts testing your reflexes / re-contextualizing your traversal moveset in new and exciting ways. -1 star for the super patronizing story with the same paperthin motifs of FACING UR ANXIETY AND ACCEPTING URSELF via really embarrassing and trite visual metaphors. Definitely a personal grievance, but as someone who has a lot of these difficulties, I can't help but find stories like this to be nonspecific and a little patronizing. I'm all for thoughtful explorations of anxiety and self sabotage but Celeste is just a bit too saccharine and neatly wrapped up to come across as anything that compelling or useful. if it worked for you that's awesome and i'm jealous! OTHERWISE its a total 10/10 this game rules 2 me

Let me start off by saying this game is the reason I made a Backloggd. It took me a while to get around to play Celeste, but when I finally did my god was it worth it. The platforming mechanics have been so finely tuned and your player character feels so good to control that I never found myself getting frustrated with the game's controls or any deaths, and if there's one thing you do a lot of, its dying. Death in Celeste was never frustrating to me because of three things: great controls/level design, short respawn time, and no loss of progress. Whenever you die, there's only a short little 1/2second death animation before you're placed at the beginning of the room, and with the hardest rooms only being a screen wide, this means the player rarely gets frustrated because their goal is always in sight, so death is only a slight setback. Unlike another difficult game, Dark Souls, where deaths can set you back up to 45 minutes of progress, and retreading your steps a third, forth time can feel like bashing your head into a brick wall, Celeste's approach to bite-size room challenges never manages to get frustrating. Not to mention most of the hardest rooms are complete optional unless you go for all the strawberries/cassettes. Because of this, the player always feels like they're progressing, one room at a time, getting closer to the top of the mountain one step at a time.

But that's just the gameplay, now time to talk about the story. When I started Celeste, I thought it was just a difficult platformer about climbing a mountain. Little did I know Celeste was a much deeper story about dealing with depression and anxiety. As someone who was struggled with both, I saw myself reflected in Madeline and her struggles. While the message of conquering your inner demons one step at a time isn't the most nuanced, its depiction of depression/anxiety is nuanced enough to compensate. The design of the game is also tightly interwoven into the story that you really feel connected to Madeline as she goes through her journey up the mountain. Any further and I'll begin to go into spoiler territory, so let me just sum up this review by saying Celeste is one of the greatest platformers in recent history, and should be played by anyone who has a love for platformers, and even if you aren't great with difficult platformers (or just want to see what the story has to offer) the assist mode is one of the best I've seen implemented into the game, so its definitely worth giving it a shot. 5/5 Stars.

An amazing example of simplicity and depth in one.

Celeste is a platformer about climbing a mountain, and thematically it’s about overcoming your fears and reaching your goals. A really easy to understand and implement theme in games. Mix that with what I interpreted as anxiety or depression and you have a nice touching story about a girl accepting what is a part of her, while literally and metaphorically overcoming a mountain of troubles (heh).

That’s kind of all the story? Maybe I’m misremembering but other than a couple character interactions that’s really it. Simple but definitely effective. While personally biased due to my mental health history, I do find stories about that stuff pretty nice.

I was going to just talk about gameplay but I realized the story also kinda matches with my opening sentence. Kinda cool.

The gameplay is a much better example of this, however.

Aside from movement keys, there are only three buttons. Jump, grab and dash. The last two are quite unique to this game.

The one a teeny bit less tied to the core of the game, the grab is, at a lower level of gameplay, mostly just a way to stop you from infinitely climbing a single wall with wall jumps like Super Meat Boy lets you. Mostly a good thing, the amount of freedom that’s lost is really small to the amount of level ideas the devs are able to make out of this extra restriction.

The way it works is simple, if you’re right up against a wall, you can press this button to grab onto it. You can then climb up and down it pretty easily. It is tied to a meter however, and once you start flashing you start to slip. This gets refreshed every time you land. Otherwise, I feel as if it’s just a breather button. Most of its use comes in from being able to take a small break and mentally prepare yourself for the next jump mid room.

The more interesting mechanic is the dash, to put it simply, at the press of a direction and a button you can dash in any of the eight cardinal directions mid air or on the ground, one use until you next touch the ground again. On its own already a really unique mechanic if used well with level design. However, this game takes it so much further than a unique mechanic.

For example, dashing diagonally down and forwards then jumping does something of a long jump. However, if you delay the jump a little bit you will be able to regain your dash, as the “dashing” state is over, and you are still on the ground. This will mean you will jump with the speed of a dash, yet be able to dash once again in the air.

The same works vertically with a slightly different input, I don’t believe you need to be holding up forwards to wall jump and get the big jump with this mechanic, just up. Nifty for sure!

Another important point is that your speed is NOT capped in this game, meaning, if you get really good at planning out where to jump and dash throughout the level, then get even better at executing it, you can fly through stages at lightning speed.

What I described is the VERY tip of the iceberg. I genuinely believe it’s one of if not the deepest modern platformer in terms of player choice and expression. I would recommend looking up speedrun tutorials and guides on how to properly move in this game. It’s quite stunning to see. It’s not my type of speedrun, but even then, it’s surely one of the best of its type.

The levels aren’t bad either! They are certainly made with almost every trick in mind. This was even admitted by devs. There is only one I know of that wasn’t intended, but it only gets used twice or so in a full game run. There are a handful of gimmicks that aren’t too fun I think but I think that’s more just me being really picky.

All of this combines into a game that not only expects something from you mechanically, but also gives back in terms of rewarding gameplay for those who really want to go above and beyond. That’s… kind of why I play games? There are games that do that better, but not games that do that with the goal of being as simple as this one. This game is a masterpiece from that perspective.

Everything I’ve said has already been said, but the game is quite personal to me. Especially story wise, it’s rare a story gets me in games, but this had just enough going on while being simple enough for my dumb brain while also just being an important topic for me. I really like it.

Overall, if you're a fan of platformers, I'd be surprised if you haven't already played it, actually. If you're not a fan, definitely try it out, it might convince you otherwise.

A 2d platformer. In general, I do not like, and am not good at, 2d platformers. However, this game is a masterpiece. Playing each level gives me the same sense as mastering a piece of music. A lot of the game did not feel like the difficulty came from tricky platforming, but rather a sort of puzzle whose solution was being in the right places at the right time. This was a welcome surprise and is the main reason I almost 100% this game. I resolved to aquire every strawberry in a level and complete that level's B-side before moving on to the next. Playing this way absolutely broke up the plot pacing, but the added challenge sharply increased my skill at the game and the later levels were less frustrating than if I had not played the way I did. I would play one new level for several hours until I either completed it, or developed a bruise on my thumb from pressing the plus key switch, usually both. There are also a plethora of assist options so players of all skills and ability can play Celeste.

One of the best of these kinds of indie 2D platformers. Love the way levels continuously build on new mechanics and slowly get you to the point of doing some pretty intense platforming, especially on the b-sides. I really like the mechanics involved in climbing/grabbing onto walls and the way it combines with the double jumps to really make some super tough but creative and fun levels. The story, while not really my thing, eventually earns its metaphor, especially in how it ties into the gameplay.

Writing: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Art Design & Visuals: 4/5
Voices & Sounds: 4/5
Atmosphere & Immersion: 3/5

Celeste is an excellent platformer with gameplay/mechanics which rank up in difficulty as you climb the mountain. The art style is quite amazing, and provides a good view for when you're climbing, sometimes even changing occasionally.

The story, although not packed with dialogue, is very amazing, and tell about a perspective of multiple mental struggles such as panic attacks. The end is also worthwhile - providing a good finish.

This game, though difficult at times and even more so in some places, is spectacular.

Shot up to my Top 3 games of all time faster then you could blink, an astounding, emotionally fulfilling experience about depression, moving on, and the necessity of human interaction. Madeline is one of the most relatable and ultimately human protagonists in any game I've ever seen, and her constant inner turmoil makes me both weep for her but root for her.

The actual platforming is also incredible and ranks as some of the best in modern gaming, with wonderfully designed levels, a simple to learn yet hard to master control scheme, and a difficulty curve that is fair but does test you. It's hard as hell but worth it. One of my favourites.

One of the most well-designed platformers in recent memory. The way mechanics are introduced, taught to the player, and integrated with other mechanics is masterful. Not every mechanic is a winner, but the overall difficulty curve is executed very well while still keeping a satisfying amount of a sort of puzzle-solving in the platforming. It seems like I'm in the minority in disliking the B- and C-sides because they stray away from the pseudo-puzzle elements of the main levels and instead focus more on muscle memory and getting your run to be absolutely perfect, which I call the Super Meat Boy zone. Evidently, these levels are optional so I can't consider them a negative.

Celeste's theming is something that feels almost complete. It's a game that's about intrinsic reward. There's no reason to climb a mountain other than to prove to yourself that you can do it. There's no reason to collect strawberries other than to prove to yourself that you can do it. The third parallel that should be here is in regards to the story. It seems like every indie game that attempts to have some sort of message these days makes it about mental illness, and Celeste is one example. Although it's overdone, it can still be done well, but I don't feel as though this game does. Celeste's symbolism is frustratingly hamfisted- the story never misses an opportunity to belligerently inform the player of a character's inner anguish or their work to overcome it. The worst of this happens during a cutscene on a gondola, where it's basically outright said what Madeline's evil counterpart represents, something that isn't difficult to pick up on in the first place. It's a game that's purposefully simplistic, in gameplay and in your character's goals, and I wish the story reflected this. I feel as though the game's message would be a lot more effective had a good portion of the dialogue been cut.