Celeste [PC/Xbone/PS4/Switch]

[Zaxxon]

I briefly mentioned Celeste in the Switch thread, but it deserves its own.

Putting this in the PC Games sub-forum since it's on Steam and most of us hang out here more than the Console sub-forum, but it's also available for current-gen consoles.

Celeste is a pixel art platformer (stay with me--I know they're over-done!). That's not really my thing. This one got pretty uniformly great reviews on launch day, so I grabbed it. It's got its hooks firmly in me.

The controls are tight, levels interesting and well-designed. What I like most about the gameplay is that this is a very difficult game that doesn't shy away from that fact. Rather, it makes dying a lot un-frustrating via quick resurrections back to the beginning of the current room and a 'feel' that clearly conveys that when I die, it's because I screwed up. No cheap deaths from poor controls here.

Celeste's personality is great, IMO. Even though it's pixel art, it's well done with a lot of neat touches--weather changes, levels have fleshed-out backgrounds with charm. There's actually a pretty meaty story here, and the soundtrack is fantastic.

It's got built-in speed-running tracking support, death counts (re-run a level to try to lower your count), collectible strawberries that do nothing for you but let you show off, and 'B-side' versions of levels that are unlocked by finding cassette tapes in each level. The B-sides ramp the difficulty up and have remixed musical scores by friends of the game's composer--including one by Ben Prunty, FTL's composer.

I am playing on Switch, where it feels at home in both portable and big-screen mode, but I imagine it'd play just as well on any of the platforms so long as you use a gamepad.

It's $20, which at first seemed a bit high to me for a pixel art platformer. After spending around 5 hours with it (I'm about halfway through my first run-through of the game), I think it's well worth the price of entry.

Trailer

IGN's First 10 of 2018

GameXplain Review

Polygon Review

Kotaku Played Celeste While Designer Matt Thorson Watched