Celeste (video game)

In this screenshot, the player-character, Madeline, is seen dashing mid-air towards an item that replenishes the dash ability in Forsaken City.

Celeste is a platform game in which players control a girl named Madeline as she makes her way up a mountain while avoiding various deadly obstacles. Along with jumping and climbing up walls for a limited amount of time, Madeline has the ability to perform a mid-air dash in the eight cardinal and intercardinal directions. This move can only be performed once and must be replenished by either landing on the ground, hitting certain objects such as floating crystals, or moving to a new screen (although the player is granted a second dash later on in the game). Combining dashes with movement in various ways can be used by the player to gain more speed than usual or access areas before they are supposed to. Some of these advanced movement mechanics are shown to the player as they progress the late stages of the game. Examples include the superdash, hyperdash, ultradash and an unintended feature, the demodash. Throughout the game, the player will encounter additional mechanics, such as springs that launch the player or feathers that allow brief flight, and deadly objects such as spikes which kill Madeline (returning her to the start of the screen).

Players can also access an Assist Mode, where they can change some attributes about the game's physics. Some of these include: infinite air-dashes, invincibility, or slowing the game's speed. Hidden throughout most "A-Side" chapters of the game are optional strawberries, obtained through challenging platforming or puzzle solving sections, which slightly affect the game's ending depending on how many are collected, as well as a cassette tape that unlocks a "B-Side", a secret level which provides harder platforming puzzles using the mechanics introduced in the A-Side.[1][2] Optional "crystal hearts" used to access post-game content are also found in each A-side. Beating all the B-Sides then unlocks the "C-Side" versions, which are very hard but short stages which expand further upon the mechanics in the A-Sides and B-Sides. B-Sides, C-Sides, and the Farewell DLC chapter all teach the player more complicated movement techniques that are needed to clear otherwise impossible obstacles. Upon clearing all C-Sides, the player can access the Variants menu, which allows players to change the game's physics in a way similar to the game's Assist Mode. Some of these "variants" include: speeding the game up, 360 degree dashing, and low friction. The original Celeste Classic Pico-8 prototype can also be found as a hidden minigame.[3]

A young woman named Madeline begins climbing Celeste Mountain, ignoring a warning from an old woman named Granny (or Celia in the final chapter) who lives at the base. Madeline makes her way through a deserted city, where she can meet a fellow traveler named Theo. Madeline camps out for the night and has a dream in which a dark reflection of herself, named Badeline, breaks out of a mirror, and attempts to stop Madeline's climb, but Madeline escapes from her and wakes up from her nightmare.

Madeline continues into an old hotel on the mountain, where the hotel's ghostly concierge, Mr. Oshiro, tries to persuade Madeline to stay despite the dingy condition of the hotel. She reluctantly entertains him by cleaning part of the resort, but he is keen on having her stay for a night. This leads to Badeline reappearing and creating an escape for Madeline, but insulting Oshiro in the process, enraging him. He chases Madeline out, and Madeline continues the climb.

After traveling through the Golden Ridge, Madeline meets up with Theo at a gondola. Badeline appears again and stalls the lift, giving Madeline a panic attack. Theo calms her down, and the gondola moves again, arriving at an ancient temple. Theo ends up separated and trapped inside a mirror. Later, Theo gets encased in a magic crystal and monsters given form from Madeline and Theo's insecurities attack them. She finds Theo and frees him from the crystal. Madeline then carries Theo out of the temple.

After breaking Theo's crystal and escaping from the temple, Madeline and Theo set up camp. Madeline tells Theo about the reflection and confides in him about her mental health issues before resting. During the night, she seeks out Badeline and expresses her wishes to leave it behind. This angers Badeline, and forces Madeline to plummet down to the base of the mountain. Stuck in a cave at the bottom of the mountain, Madeline meets the old woman again, who suggests that Badeline might be scared and says that Madeline should try talking instead of abandoning it.

Madeline searches for Badeline again, apologizes for pushing it away and vows to climb the mountain together. Badeline initially lashes out at Madeline, but relents and forgives her. Badeline and Madeline merge, and they work their way back up the mountain, before finally reaching the summit.

An epilogue shows Madeline celebrating her success with her friends by eating strawberry pie. The pie will be larger and contain more or less strawberries depending on how many strawberries the player collected throughout the game.

In two post-ending chapters, Madeline explores the core of Celeste Mountain a year after the main story in the chapter "Core", and copes with missing the funeral of Granny, now known as Celia, in the chapter Farewell.

Noel Berry (Skytorn) and Maddy Thorson (TowerFall), who programmed Celeste, created the original Pico-8 Celeste[note 2] in four days during a game jam.[4] The result was a difficult platformer with 30 levels designed for speedrunning and precision reflexes. Kill Screen noted that the game was a departure from Thorson's TowerFall, and had more in common with the game mechanics of their older games and Super Mario Maker work.[5] The developers also took inspiration from difficult NES and Super Nintendo-era platformers, such as Super Mario Bros. 3.[6][7] Berry and Thorson developed the game into a standalone release with over 200 rooms spread between eight chapters.[8] They livestreamed parts of their development process on Twitch. The game was also demoed at the 2016 PAX West Indie Megabooth.[9] Celeste released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, Linux and macOS on January 25, 2018.[10][11] The game was later released on Stadia on July 28, 2020, later becoming a Stadia Pro game on October 1.[12][13] The original Pico-8 prototype is included in the game as an unlockable minigame.[14] The game received a limited collector's edition on January 1, 2019.[15] On September 9, 2019, the Farewell DLC was released, adding a ninth chapter, 100 new levels and 40 minutes of new music to the game.[16][17][18] It was the last addition to the game, and no sequel to the game is planned, as the team members behind it plan to move to different game projects.[19]

The game is recognized as appearing to have several difficult platform game elements, often involving combinations of multiple jumps, dashes, wall jumps and other abilities, but yet has been considered approachable. Thorson revealed in a series of tweets that in developing the platforming logic, they created wide "windows" for a player to make an action as to give the player a better chance to succeed, such as allowing the player to be able to jump a few moments after moving off a ledge instead of falling immediately. Thorson called all these elements part of the "game-feel" of Celeste and made the game more forgiving to players.[20]

On January 26, 2021, the third year anniversary of the release of Celeste, a sequel to Celeste Classic, titled Celeste 2: Lani's Trek, was released for free.[21]

Celeste, which was designed with speedrunning in mind, became an instant hit in the speedrunning community.[71][72][73] USgamer called the game's popularity within the community "a huge part of Celeste's success."[71] Celeste sound designer Kevin Regamey stated that the team received a lot of mail from fans claiming that the game led them to try speedrunning for the first time.[71] It also became a staple at Games Done Quick events.[71]

The ending cutscene of the Farewell DLC features various items in Madeline's bedroom, such as pride and transgender flags, that lead to speculation from fans and media outlets that Madeline was a trans woman.[74][75] Thorson confirmed that Madeline was transgender in November 2020, stating that they never formally announced this before as they were figuring out their own gender identity at the time, and because the team did not want to make a spectacle of the reveal.[76][77] The fact that Madeline is canonically transgender was met positively by the LGBT community, but also received some backlash, with hateful, political or religiously-charged messages aimed at the character and the game's creators.[74]

Both Madeline and Badeline are playable characters in the Nintendo Switch version of TowerFall, another game by Thorson originally released in 2013; the Switch version was released on September 27, 2018.[78]

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Celeste (video game).

• Official website
• Pico-8 prototype