I've gotten every collectable this game has to offer, I've gotten the golden berries for beating every chapter deathless, and I'm still so far from having mastered this game or finishing it in any regard.


I'll start by saying this. The hour count being 1677 is not a mistake, and I'm not too interested in speedrunning. At the end of the day, Celeste brought me to this point with the decision to make the code easily assessable to modders. To have developers who've actively encouraged the community to continue taking creative strides with their game, going as far as to stream the biggest celeste mod, strawberry jam, on the official EXOK games account.

All this is to say that, while Celeste's genuinely really fantastic story has helped both me and a lot of my friends in ways I can't thank this game enough for, what brought longevity to the game was true freedom of creative expression in a platformer with by far the most fleshed out movement system I've ever experienced. Each time I thought I'd seen it all, new movement techniques were brought out of the woodworks, new maps were made to explore those ideas, new code was developed as helper mods to add new mechanics or physics to the game. Between timeless masterpieces like The Solaris System, a full on metroidvania with currency and an upgrade system, a hollow knight style map with its own health system, a map with genuinely one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a game about madeline discovering the secrets of a lost civilization on an abandoned moon (look up celeste darkmoon ruins, you won't regret it), a map that gives you a currency and lets you build your own solution, a map that makes dashing into anything and jumping fling you in that direction, a map that gives madeline a gun and combines it with quick-paced platforming, a map where the ominous, droning music contains its own music sheet with translatable inputs that tell you how to beat each room - I've only scratched the surface here. Between Nutty Noon and Cryoshock and any other map I can think of, the quality of level design, music, art direction, and raw creativity is absolutely unbelievable for just being a kind and supportive modding community that works off of passion to the game.

But, I've wandered a bit far off from the topic of the review. This isn't just celeste mods - this is celeste as a whole, and between Celeste having one of the greatest soundtracks ever produced, a movement system so advanced I'm still discovering new tech 1600 hours into the game, a great story that many can relate to all the way through, forgiving mechanics and postcards at the end of each chapter that encourage you to keep going and never give up, and a fantastic pixel artstyle that pulls the experience together beautifully, I could not recommend this experience more to anyone. Give the game a shot! I promise - even if it feels difficult, you ARE good enough to do this.