Celeste

I have a slight admission to make: I was a little underwhelmed by Nintendo’s latest platforming masterpiece, Super Mario Odyssey. Don’t get me wrong - the game is a master class in game design, with some gorgeously colourful art design, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of been there, done that before. I decided to pick up Celeste, one of the many inventive indie games filling up the Nintendo Switch’s online store, and this has seemingly scratched my itch for a new and innovative platformer.

Celeste takes the best elements of games such as The Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy (the-trial-and-error-approach) with the branching level design of the very best of Nintendo (Super Metroid in particular springing to mind), along with its Mario sensibilities, to form a surprisingly thoughtful and highly addictive addition to the blooming indie market. You play as the red-haired protagonist Madeline, who is trying to reach the summit of the infamous Celeste Mountain. To overcome this, the player must guide Madeline through hundreds of different platform-filled rooms, containing various hazards such as spikes, sheer drops and the terrifying forces of nature. Madeline can jump, do a mid-air dash and can scale horizontal walls, though only for a limited amount of time before her stamina runs out. With no attacks in your arsenal, Celeste requires you to get to grips with its platforming shenanigans - fast.

Celeste is a breath of fresh air in the platforming genre

You are going to die a lot in Celeste. It took me a while to get used to its form of fast, zippy platforming, relying on a split second decisions, precise analog stick movement and some nifty understanding of the game mechanics. All this comes with practice and the more you play Celeste the more it begins to feel like a fighting or DDR game, just without the fighting or the dancing, as it relies on getting into the flow of the controls. The best thing the game does is let the player make errors. If you die in a room, you are simply teleported back to its beginning. Soon, you begin to learn and adapt to the environment of the game. Eventually, when you enter a new room, you start to strategise in your head the best course of action to take to tackle this new platforming-puzzle. The whole thing becomes second nature and fairly involving, with my body literally seizing up at some moments whilst I pulled off a tricky jump. It all really fell into place for me when I reached the end of Level 2, when I was tasked with running away from the embodiment of the dark reflection of Madeline. This was incredibly tough but oh-so satisfying when I managed to navigate the increasingly complex environment and perfectly dodging the attacks of my terrifying enemy. Each room and overall level presents new challenges and platforming-riddles to solve but always comes down to finding different ways of pushing your jumping skills to the test.

For those players who really want to push themselves, Celeste has plenty of branching paths in the level design, hidden rooms and illusive strawberries which offer extra points but require some serious skill to obtain. At first, these seem almost impossible to reach but as your skills refine over the course of the game, the strawberries present a tantalising reward for players who want to put their chops to the test. The game, to its credit, doesn’t judge players who want to take a step back from this extra bit of challenge though.

Celeste, unlike most platformers, has a rich tale to tell

The most surprising element to me was the increasingly tender and passionate story it tells, in particular for a genre not normally renowned for its story-telling. Protagonist Madeline is incredibly relatable as her journey up the mountain clearly has a deeper meaning for the often down trodden character. Madeline is riddled with depression, anxiety, unsure on what her future holds and suffers from panic attacks. Perhaps climbing the mountain, itself a gruelling feat, will provide her with some kind of recourse on how she should live her life. Along the way you meet some great characters, some just being funny asides while others reveal some surprisingly tragic backstories, my absolute favourite being the ghostly proprietor of an abandoned hotel. These character encounters are often as thrilling as the fast-paced platforming.

The overall design of the world is simply wonderful. While the sprite animations are simple and blocky, there is a fluidity to their movement that makes it feel like a retro-inspired game for the HD generation. Backgrounds and weather effects are beautifully realised and the colour design has a bright yet slightly melancholic feel. Dialogue with residents of the mountain are complete with charming and very expressive anime-inspired character art. I would be remiss without mentioning the incredible soundtrack as well. Going from the sweeping 16-bit inspired uplifting tracks in the early part of the game to the more subdued, piano-led score in the second half, composer Lena Raine has crafted a new classic video-game score. Even in the most downbeat of levels, the soundtrack keeps a constant sense of rhythm going to keep the player thinking about executing the perfectly timed jumps to reach the other end of the screen. It’s a gorgeously presented game and a testament to the designers.

So if you’re in the mood for an all together different kind of platformer, I can’t recommend Celeste enough. It took me a while to get used to its style of platforming but when the pieces fell into place, it was one of the most rewarding and endlessly fun platformer I’ve played in years. I can’t wait to see what this creative team have in store for us next. With its snowy-topped peaks, intense gameplay, rich story and the oh-so hummable soundtrack, Celeste is a game I will cherish for a long time to come.