Review (2025 December)

Prologue

Celeste is a platformer developed and published by indie studio Maddy Makes Games in 2018. Like I mentioned in my Steam review, I had not met a game that fits me so perfectly for a long time – no wonder why it is not that popular!

This is a game of mount climbing, but it reflects the core of real mount climbing very well. You can learn from others, with their experience and advice. But in the end, you still need to reach the summit by your own effort. Some easy parts, some will make you depressed. Just like life, solitude and depression do exist. If you succumb to any of those hard points, you fail. The moment you conquer it, you win.

The movements in Celeste are smooth as hell, designed to perfection. Perhaps you will not get the feeling, until you attempt a similar platformer. The ambience and music fit the theme really well, sometimes eerie enough to the point that nothing feels eerie anymore in the end!

Story

As a hardcore platformer, story is definitely not among Celeste's biggest selling points. There are not even many characters exist in Celeste, but all designed with unique and memorable personalities – an excellent sign of success in character design. The story of Celeste is not that long, and almost finished after clearing 7A. However, it does somehow try to tell and finish an intriguing story.

To me, the heroine Madeline is a typical and perfect example of INFPs: a fragile appearance, emotional and whimsical, sometimes a bit silly; but with a strong and even stubborn inner self – otherwise who would suffer climbing this ridiculous mountain called Celeste? Maybe those crazily masochistic ones like INTJs or INFJs. Back to Celeste, a short story of an INFP facing her severe anxiety and depression in an brave and honest way, in the end not making them totally disappear, but instead learn to live alongside her dark side – called Badeline. She's the worst, but also the best.

To INFPs, just train your Te and you will keep growing. To others, do not look down too much on INFPs, or you might get a strong retaliation in the near future ;)!

Difficulty

Although regarded as an insanely difficult platform, Celeste has a perfect learning curve. Starting with something simple and basic, a few new concepts in almost every chapter, hardly any spikes that are too painful (at least for A sides), and players gradually become better at this game. As the last chapter of the main storyline, 7A is a perfect example showing this – look at how much you have grown through the journey so far! And there also exists the assist mode, which will customise the difficulty further as you wish – a perfect design for those just want to finish the story in a painless way.

For some players, finishing 7A means the end of Celeste. For others – real challengers – passing 7A means the very beginning. There are totally 25 chapters in Celeste, including B sides and C sides, some weird collectibles and the most well-known Golden Strawberries. Keep going further as you wish, and the difficult will keep climbing up as well.

Chapter 9

Almost like a free DLC chapter, but long as an A side, and tough as a C side. Forget about those Golden Strawberries that I am going to discuss in a moment, just aim to complete this ridiculous chapter – without any kind of extra assists – you will have my salute.

• When you think you are almost near the end of this chapter? Not even half ;)!

• What kind of difficult points does this chapter have? Almost everything, any of those you can imagine, including a lot of unique but tough designs from B sides and C sides.

• Welcome to the end, the real end. Now enjoy the longest screen ever in this game ;)!

Just insane. For your information, my first clear took me 8:37:58.295 and 2634 deaths ;)! Great theme, great music, and emotional ending to some extent – worth every litter death.

Golden Strawberries

The ultimate challenge in Celeste, which is not even required in any achievements. In short, clearing with dying. That said, Golden Strawberries are closely related to 2 parts – chapter length and difficulty degree.

• C sides – hardest screens but very few of them – Golden Strawberries in these chapters turn out to be pretty easy to obtain. You only need to hold on for a short period of time, even for tougher ones like 7C and 8C.

• A sides – most screens but overall easy – the difficulty starts to diverge. Where 1A and 2A are almost as easy as C sides, you will start to feel the pressure with 3A, 4A, and 5A. Though those screens are no where near evil, one mistake to death after having survived for like 5 minutes is something else. And then 6A and 8A, very different concepts and I am bad with both, are almost on the same level when talking about Golden Strawberries. As the last chapter of the main storyline, 7A is designed to be the longest chapter apart from Chapter 9 as mentioned before. My fastest time of completing 7A turns out to be 16:14.066, which means no single mistake at least for the next 16 minutes to get this precious reward. That said, the Golden Strawberry in 7A is among the hardest ones in Celeste.

• B sides – much more screens than C sides and much harder screens than A sides – the toughest ones after doing a multiplication. 1B and 2B are still generous gifts, worse than their corresponding A sides, but only to a small margin which is totally acceptable. 3B, 4B, and 5B are already on par with 6A and 8A. Inititally, I thought I could not make it to this level simply by looking at those chapters. But after some continuous practices, I got used to the level and only found out that those were still pretty much manageable, when comparing to the last trio – 6B, 7B, and 8B. Up to this point, the ranking should be very subjective. There are some heavy debates between 6B and 8B, and some even think that the theoretically hardest 7B is actually easier than both 6B and 8B! A bit surprising, but reasonable to me. Similar to their corresponding A sides, both 6B and 8B gave me extremely painful nightmare, and I think they are again very close – with 7B on top.

The following order does not exactly reflect how I rank the difficulty level, but rather the order in which I got each Golden Strawberry – somewhat related, though.

• Level 1: 1C-2C-3C-4C-5C-6C-7C-8C

• Level 2: 1A-2A-1B-3A-4A-2B-5A

• Level 3: 6A-8A-3B-4B-5B

• Level 4: 6B-8B-7A-7B

• Level X: 9 (God Tier!)

Epilogue

Celeste, such a great journey. In short, I have collected 201 strawberries out of the possible 202 in Celeste, only missing the Golden Strawberry of Chapter 9, which I am not even brave enough to challenge. I once said that this challenge alone would be harder than completing a PhD, and till the moment when I am writing this review I still think in the same way. However, I still managed to complete Chapter 9 in 40 deaths within 30 minutes – a great achievement – but far from the Golden Strawberry. Let's save the number for now and remember:

• Practice makes perfect.

• Challenge your limit with perseverance.

• Follow your heart with passion.