If there are two things you should know about me, it's that I have a very low tolerance for both repetition and friction in the games I play. That naturally leads to me rarely if ever replaying games and 100%ing them at a similar nonexistent rate. Yet here I am, having downloaded Celeste onto my Steam Deck just to try out the device on a game that'd be easy to immediately jump into. Then I ended up not only replaying the game to completion after my original playthrough in 2018, but to 100% completion. All 25 levels, all strawberries, and the Moon Berry (and 2 Goldies for good measure).
I got the game largely on a whim when I was 14 going on 15, and even seeing the radiant reviews it got did not prepare me for how dearly I would latch onto it. Getting invested into the story, attaching to Madeline, struggling through the C-Sides on the bus on the way to school every day for weeks. It was one of the first really good indie experiences I got my hands on and helped inform a lot of the way I view games today. Even before the replay, I felt confident saying it was my third favorite game of all time! I could go with the cliche bit about how "oh I was worried if the game would live up to my memories", but... I knew it'd be an amazing time. It's Celeste.
Now, did I anticipate that my appreciation for the game would reach a whole new level and I'd tear up over it in joy? Not quite! But it happened!
Here's the thing about playing Celeste today versus back then... I'm OLD. No matter how mature I thought I was at 14, my capacity for engaging with and understanding the media I experience has naturally grown vastly in the intervening years. These reviews are an exercise in understanding all these different games I play and figuring out how I'm supposed to share my findings with others. Rationally, it makes perfect sense; of course I can engage with art better when I'm older, but the internalization of this was a constant thought it my head during my entire present playthrough. Now when I look at this game, I'm so much better able to comprehend how it works, how it tutorializes its plethora of advanced mechanics, how it plays with its characters, and builds up its set pieces, and rewards, and teases, and makes me tear up. And—most importantly—I can appreciate better than ever how masterfully it pulls everything off.
One thing I had lost sight of as my memories of the game flattened out was just how different the A-sides are to the B and C-sides, with a heightened focus on exploration for all the strawberries and other collectables. The main path itself for most of these is over in a matter of 5 minutes, but there's such a strong appeal to digging into all these side challenges and secrets, my eagle eyes spotting a whole that is very clearly a secret area, then spotting a secret area within that secret area, and so on. The levels end up feeling like such vast expanses, with finding the main path often being part of the level's challenge! The level I remember having the least gracious memories of, Mirror Temple, ended up being one of my highlights this go around thanks to how hard it goes into being a big winding maze of pure collectable challenges. Reflecting on it now... it makes total sense the next game they're making is a Metroidvania! It plays off on the DNA of the A-sides almost perfectly.
To my pleasant surprise, there was a plethora of small moments interspersed throughout the A-Side experience beyond just the raw story and gameplay that had entirely left my memory, making the experience all the more special. Positioning the feather to steady Maddy's breaths has stuck in my mind ever since I first experienced it, but how about the scene where Madeline and Theo just talk at the end of 5A under the canopy of a dialogue tree that must encompass like half of the game's entire dialogue? It's such a natural conversation and I love how it gives Madeline the chance to let out all her feelings. Or the way the monster creatures in 5A are tutorialized by having you temporarily control one of them, to kill Madeline in her mind? It's so easy to forget, when most of my memories of the game consisted of throwing myself at the gameplay-oriented B and C sides how thorough of an experience Celeste is.
This isn't to knock the B and C sides though, because I love them still very much. It's obvious the game's credits rolls, while the end of Madeline's main arc, is but the "first act" of the entire gameplay experience. Instead of talking with the player predominantly on the basis of narrative, it shifts to guiding you with a (very) light hand through all of its challenges, and still introducing a bevy of new ideas and techniques even as the level themes are recycled. Even after the first 14 whole levels, 7B introduces the super wall jump and the game from then on out demands you know how to use it! In 8C when you have to learn how to grounded wavedash (I'm not looking up their actual terms LOL) from the tutorial bird, and slowly honing it through the gauntlet of its third screen. Then, at the very end, that fucking bird that I hate pops up again in front of the most mechanical implementation of the grounded wavedash since the very start, as if to say "you've better mastered it by now, bitch". And if we ignore the fact I died to that final trial like 10 times, I sure did master it.
Another surprise from this replay was that, wow, I really am just better at videogames than I used to be huh. My original playthrough took 42 hours with an incomplete strawberry list and a record of over 11k deaths. It only took me 17 hours this go around to beat every level with all the strawberries and two whole golden berries, all in a cool 3.6k and change deaths. It felt really cathartic going through these levels that caused me so much strife prior and have a pretty chill, but still demanding, time. Even when the difficulty really ratchets up with 7C, 8C, and Farewell, no one section kept me banging against my wall for all too long, sans one screen in Farewell that was remedied with the miracle cure of... taking a break to do something else and coming back to it! I beat it in one (1) minute on my return! Wow!
It all culminated well with the final few screens of the game. I flew through them with the wind at my back (sometimes literally!), knowing instinctively my path through the level. Then, the final screen of the entire campaign: a brutal gauntlet that demands a good 90 seconds of solid execution to succeed. After the first few attempts, I certain smugness set within me: "this isn't that hard". And what do you know, about 15 minutes worth of attempts later, my smugness was vindicated and victory was achieved. An immensely satisfying way to send off my gameplay experience with Celsete.
Something else about me has changed too, of course, one of the most important changes even. I realized I was trans, just like Madeline. The timeline of Celeste's designer Maddy Thorson realizing Madeline was trans as she herself figured out her gender identity, to revealing it in a 2020 blogpost missed out on overlapping with my own processing of my identity by a bit over a year. I already had Celeste being a transgender story pretty well squared away in my mind, never truly reckoning with it once it became something I could personally relate to.
Back during my first playthrough, back when Mount Celeste was a metaphor for depression and nothing more, I could recognize how good of a story Celeste told—it was one of the reasons I loved it so much—but it wasn't something I could relate to. Now though, coming back as an adult, as a woman who's gone through a hell of a lot to figure myself out, I get it now. Despite not being consciously written as a story about a girl learning to embrace her own identity, the transgender reading is so blatantly obvious—it was certainly unconsciously written as one. Thorson summed it up in her blog post on the matter. If you haven't read it, it feels essential to do so.
"Celeste is a game written and designed by a closeted trans person who was struggling with their gender identity, scored by a trans woman, with art and code and sound and other labor from their inspiring and irreplaceable friends."
Even if I have by and large figured myself out and am living as the best woman I can be in all aspects of life, it's still such a vulnerable thing to be. It's still so rare to have the experiences I have gone through be reflected in what I watch and play. To have it sink in how this game I love to death is really the unfiltered experience of someone just like me, I feel so seen. It makes me wanted to cry. When seeing Madeline and Badeline embrace each other, as Madeline embraces identity and gains the newfound resolve to keep moving forward, it made we want to cry. And reflecting on it all now, it still makes me want to cry.
There's a happenstance as Madeline climbs the Summit in 7A. Remember, Madeline was not yet understood by Thorson to be trans at the game's initial release. Yet, when she soars through the sky thanks to the newly embraced part of her, the sky is painted in streaks of blue, pink, and white: a canvas of trans pride surrounding her. She keeps moving forward, unafraid of failure, just glad she is trying. The fact she is pushing forward, that *I* am pushing forward, in spite of the immense challenges that loom an impossible shadow over us; our greatest victory is that we continue to be who we are.
I got the game largely on a whim when I was 14 going on 15, and even seeing the radiant reviews it got did not prepare me for how dearly I would latch onto it. Getting invested into the story, attaching to Madeline, struggling through the C-Sides on the bus on the way to school every day for weeks. It was one of the first really good indie experiences I got my hands on and helped inform a lot of the way I view games today. Even before the replay, I felt confident saying it was my third favorite game of all time! I could go with the cliche bit about how "oh I was worried if the game would live up to my memories", but... I knew it'd be an amazing time. It's Celeste.
Now, did I anticipate that my appreciation for the game would reach a whole new level and I'd tear up over it in joy? Not quite! But it happened!
Here's the thing about playing Celeste today versus back then... I'm OLD. No matter how mature I thought I was at 14, my capacity for engaging with and understanding the media I experience has naturally grown vastly in the intervening years. These reviews are an exercise in understanding all these different games I play and figuring out how I'm supposed to share my findings with others. Rationally, it makes perfect sense; of course I can engage with art better when I'm older, but the internalization of this was a constant thought it my head during my entire present playthrough. Now when I look at this game, I'm so much better able to comprehend how it works, how it tutorializes its plethora of advanced mechanics, how it plays with its characters, and builds up its set pieces, and rewards, and teases, and makes me tear up. And—most importantly—I can appreciate better than ever how masterfully it pulls everything off.
One thing I had lost sight of as my memories of the game flattened out was just how different the A-sides are to the B and C-sides, with a heightened focus on exploration for all the strawberries and other collectables. The main path itself for most of these is over in a matter of 5 minutes, but there's such a strong appeal to digging into all these side challenges and secrets, my eagle eyes spotting a whole that is very clearly a secret area, then spotting a secret area within that secret area, and so on. The levels end up feeling like such vast expanses, with finding the main path often being part of the level's challenge! The level I remember having the least gracious memories of, Mirror Temple, ended up being one of my highlights this go around thanks to how hard it goes into being a big winding maze of pure collectable challenges. Reflecting on it now... it makes total sense the next game they're making is a Metroidvania! It plays off on the DNA of the A-sides almost perfectly.
To my pleasant surprise, there was a plethora of small moments interspersed throughout the A-Side experience beyond just the raw story and gameplay that had entirely left my memory, making the experience all the more special. Positioning the feather to steady Maddy's breaths has stuck in my mind ever since I first experienced it, but how about the scene where Madeline and Theo just talk at the end of 5A under the canopy of a dialogue tree that must encompass like half of the game's entire dialogue? It's such a natural conversation and I love how it gives Madeline the chance to let out all her feelings. Or the way the monster creatures in 5A are tutorialized by having you temporarily control one of them, to kill Madeline in her mind? It's so easy to forget, when most of my memories of the game consisted of throwing myself at the gameplay-oriented B and C sides how thorough of an experience Celeste is.
This isn't to knock the B and C sides though, because I love them still very much. It's obvious the game's credits rolls, while the end of Madeline's main arc, is but the "first act" of the entire gameplay experience. Instead of talking with the player predominantly on the basis of narrative, it shifts to guiding you with a (very) light hand through all of its challenges, and still introducing a bevy of new ideas and techniques even as the level themes are recycled. Even after the first 14 whole levels, 7B introduces the super wall jump and the game from then on out demands you know how to use it! In 8C when you have to learn how to grounded wavedash (I'm not looking up their actual terms LOL) from the tutorial bird, and slowly honing it through the gauntlet of its third screen. Then, at the very end, that fucking bird that I hate pops up again in front of the most mechanical implementation of the grounded wavedash since the very start, as if to say "you've better mastered it by now, bitch". And if we ignore the fact I died to that final trial like 10 times, I sure did master it.
Another surprise from this replay was that, wow, I really am just better at videogames than I used to be huh. My original playthrough took 42 hours with an incomplete strawberry list and a record of over 11k deaths. It only took me 17 hours this go around to beat every level with all the strawberries and two whole golden berries, all in a cool 3.6k and change deaths. It felt really cathartic going through these levels that caused me so much strife prior and have a pretty chill, but still demanding, time. Even when the difficulty really ratchets up with 7C, 8C, and Farewell, no one section kept me banging against my wall for all too long, sans one screen in Farewell that was remedied with the miracle cure of... taking a break to do something else and coming back to it! I beat it in one (1) minute on my return! Wow!
It all culminated well with the final few screens of the game. I flew through them with the wind at my back (sometimes literally!), knowing instinctively my path through the level. Then, the final screen of the entire campaign: a brutal gauntlet that demands a good 90 seconds of solid execution to succeed. After the first few attempts, I certain smugness set within me: "this isn't that hard". And what do you know, about 15 minutes worth of attempts later, my smugness was vindicated and victory was achieved. An immensely satisfying way to send off my gameplay experience with Celsete.
Something else about me has changed too, of course, one of the most important changes even. I realized I was trans, just like Madeline. The timeline of Celeste's designer Maddy Thorson realizing Madeline was trans as she herself figured out her gender identity, to revealing it in a 2020 blogpost missed out on overlapping with my own processing of my identity by a bit over a year. I already had Celeste being a transgender story pretty well squared away in my mind, never truly reckoning with it once it became something I could personally relate to.
Back during my first playthrough, back when Mount Celeste was a metaphor for depression and nothing more, I could recognize how good of a story Celeste told—it was one of the reasons I loved it so much—but it wasn't something I could relate to. Now though, coming back as an adult, as a woman who's gone through a hell of a lot to figure myself out, I get it now. Despite not being consciously written as a story about a girl learning to embrace her own identity, the transgender reading is so blatantly obvious—it was certainly unconsciously written as one. Thorson summed it up in her blog post on the matter. If you haven't read it, it feels essential to do so.
"Celeste is a game written and designed by a closeted trans person who was struggling with their gender identity, scored by a trans woman, with art and code and sound and other labor from their inspiring and irreplaceable friends."
Even if I have by and large figured myself out and am living as the best woman I can be in all aspects of life, it's still such a vulnerable thing to be. It's still so rare to have the experiences I have gone through be reflected in what I watch and play. To have it sink in how this game I love to death is really the unfiltered experience of someone just like me, I feel so seen. It makes me wanted to cry. When seeing Madeline and Badeline embrace each other, as Madeline embraces identity and gains the newfound resolve to keep moving forward, it made we want to cry. And reflecting on it all now, it still makes me want to cry.
There's a happenstance as Madeline climbs the Summit in 7A. Remember, Madeline was not yet understood by Thorson to be trans at the game's initial release. Yet, when she soars through the sky thanks to the newly embraced part of her, the sky is painted in streaks of blue, pink, and white: a canvas of trans pride surrounding her. She keeps moving forward, unafraid of failure, just glad she is trying. The fact she is pushing forward, that *I* am pushing forward, in spite of the immense challenges that loom an impossible shadow over us; our greatest victory is that we continue to be who we are.