Topic: Games you've recently beat

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Celeste

WHAT IS IT?
A precision platformer with controls and gameplay reminiscent of earlier titles such as Super Meat Boy and Slime-San where you play as a depressed young woman named Madeline who is determined to climb to the summit of Mount Celeste, which is filled with mysteries and danger. She meets a variety of eclectic characters on her journey and is forced to confront a dark reflection of herself that manifests as a physical entity on the mountain.

PLATFORM
Nintendo Switch

LEVEL OF COMPLETION
Completed the normal levels for Chapters 1 - 8 and collected all the strawberries. Also unlocked and completed the B-side levels for Chapters 1 - 7 (Chapter 8's B-Side is locked behind an extra set of collectibles that are especially hidden with each level, and, honestly, after spending 25 hours over 4 days playing this, I'm a bit exhausted). Didn't complete the recently released Chapter 9 DLC, which I hear is the most challenging part of the game, but I'll come back to it someday.

GAMEPLAY

The game is organized into a variety of chapters. Each chapter will generally advance the story, and is composed of a long series of primarily single-screen platforming challenges. While the game only requires the player to do the bare minimum to navigate to the end of the level, there are a host of collectibles, hidden and open, to collect along the way. Strawberries, the most prominent collectibles in the game, are objects that you usually have to go out of your way to collect. Normal strawberries also you to collect them however you like, but they usually require the player to complete the platforming challenge they were obtained during before the player is allowed to collect them. If you die immediately after having grabbed a strawberry, you'll have to go back and try for it again. Alternative strawberries include ones that are formed by collecting a certain number of items throughout a room without touching the ground, and one with wings that will fly away if you use your dash ability trying to get to them, forcing the player to rely on normal jumps and platforming mechanics to reach them. Each chapter will also have a crystal heart, which often requires extremely out-of-the-box thinking to obtain, and a B-side cassette, which unlocks a harder and often much longer version of a given level as an optional challenge.

Celeste's controls seem simple at first, but there is a ton of depth to the platforming in this game. Most of it won't be accessible to normal players, although the good news is that most people should be able to beat the game in its default difficulty with just normal jumps and dashes.

PRO:

• I REALLY like how the game tells you how many strawberries are in each section of a chapter, and lets you jump right into that section to collect what you need. It also seems to autosave after successfully collecting a strawberry, which allows the player to jump in and out of stages at will.
• Immediately restarting players at the start of a room when they die during a challenge is central to encouraging them to keep trying at a challenge.
• The best levels in this game integrate level design/exploration/aesthetics/theme to create one compelling whole. The Mirror Temple near the middle of the game stands out in this regard.
• I really like the way the ending changes depending on how many strawberries you've collected. Very cute.
• I was tempted to create a separate section for this observation, since it could be either a pro or a con, depending on the person. The developers of this game seem to have a deep love for Nintendo games, and you'll find design aspects here that reference the Big N's games constantly. Characters jabber in a soft nonsense language reminiscent of Animal Crossing (thankfully, these sounds lack the ear-shredding quality found in another recent Nintendo-inspired indie adventure, Yooka-Laylee). Many of Madeline's abilities recall gameplay from older Nintendo games, be they the Super Metroid-esque wall jump exploit you can perform to conserve stamina, "wave-dashing," or the obviously Cosmic Mario-inspired sequences where Madeline's shadow mirrors her movements and kills her if she catches up.

CON:

• Crystal Heart locations are often unintuitive. The one in the second or third chapter (I forget) has you dashing upward by phasing back and forth between screen transitions. It's a clever design choice, but the problem is I don't recall the game ever making a point of introducing this aspect of the design in any way, which makes it feel less like a collectible and more like an Easter Egg. Except late game content is hidden until you obtain these collectibles.
• I don't like the level design in the B-sides. It's reminiscent of a lot of Super Mario Maker levels I've played insofar as they rely on repeatedly pulling off a certain series of platforming moves in exactly the same way in a sequence until you clear a room. Like many Mario Maker levels, these platforming moves are forced by covering nearly every inch of the screen that you're not supposed to touch in instakill spikes. It's incredibly uncreative and lazy.
• More broadly, there are too many levels, even in the main part of the game, where there's little to no design openness. More often than not, there's only one correct way to clear a challenge, and it even requires identical timing with the jumps and whatnot.
• This might seem like a weird criticism, but the way platforms are oriented within levels in this game often feel very inorganic and abstract, as if they were designed for a video game and nothing else. Compare to a game like DKC: Tropical Freeze, where every level element feels like it belongs within that environment, and elements work together to create a coherent environmental picture.
• Celeste sometimes teaches game mechanics passively through good level design, but oftentimes it leaves the exact operations of things a complete mystery. The game really doesn't explain its stamina system, for example, and good luck consistently triggering high jumps on springs and bouncy clouds until you figure out the timing that the game gives you no idea about.

STORY/CHARACTERS

Celeste is marginally more engaging than games with similar mechanics and challenges due to how the game structures the levels in such a way that you feel like you're going on an adventure, as opposed to just trying to go from left to right in linear stages. Part of this is due to the light narrative focus. The best stages in this game combine a persistent narrative thread with complex, exploratory level design, which helps to develop the context that Madeline's journey up the mountain is a sort of psycho-spiritual odyssey for her. Not every stage is like this, but these sections help to distinguish Celeste from many of its indie game peers.

Plot-wise, a lot of interesting ideas are hinted at or suggested and then promptly abandoned throughout the game. While this is frustrating in some respects, I do like how the developer keeps the game laser-focused on Madeline's subjective experience throughout. Not every game needs to be an epic, or deeply plumb the mysteries and lore of imagined settings; for better or for worse, whatever bizarre contrivances are hinted at throughout, it's just set design for Madeline's journey of personal growth.

There are a number of colorful characters that Madeline meets on her adventure, and they're fun, but mostly underdeveloped, and are typically characterized by one overriding character trait. As mentioned before, the game is focused on Madeline, so the rest of the characters who aren't Madeline (or her double) end up going fairly undeveloped.

ART/CHARACTER DESIGNS/MUSIC

I'm a bit conflicted here. While the game's environments often make wonderful use of color to offer up vibrant backdrops, the pixel art for the characters is horrible. There's no detail to them at all. I obviously don't expect hyper-detailed WayForward-esque sprites, but this, at least visually, often feels like about a thousand other lazy indie games out there.

The CGs that periodically pop up during chapters and bookend each chapter are frequently adorable and full of personality.

The game is more consistently excellent on the music front. Composer Lena Raine's gorgeous tracks, often piano-dominated, exude a variety of emotions and do a great job of immersing the player throughout. There are some really stellar remixes from other artists during the B-side levels as well. There aren't too many indie games with soundtracks this good, honestly, and it's another element that really elevates Celeste above its peers.

CONCLUSION
Celeste is a fun, challenging, and fairly memorable platformer with a strong central narrative, compelling music, and a lengthy campaign that rewards players who persist and attempt to engage with as much of the game's content as possible. Terrible pixel art for the characters, lacking character and story development (not related to Madeline), and some quibbles with the game design drag it down a bit for me, but I enjoyed my time with it.

VERDICT
8/10