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.
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.