Celeste! ♫ the best a game can get ♫

how far are you? are you speedrunning anything yet?

or also, maybe, what is celeste? what is this game "celeste" that everyone's talking about?

I've done the first three stages, the first two B-sides, and all of a certain extra you can access from stage three. I was surprised by how emotional I got at the end of the second stage.

this game is sw8 but i am horrible at it. horrible at all twitchy games. i'm about as far in as ^^^ and already there have been a bunch of times where i can't seem to progress without stepping away from the current room for a few hours, only to come back, beat it, and have to do the same for the very next room, ad roominum.

not a bad thing necessarily, just makes me question if my thumbs are doing what i think i'm telling them to.

that's about where i am, too, although i haven't even tried the b-sides yet. i'm not really a speedrunner type but i can see trying to set a good PR for the first couple chapters. they seem like they'd actually be possible to do in one run, without dying, with enough practice. and even if your PR is several minutes slower than some absurdly good 7-year-old, it's still satisfying in a very particular way to have the ability to run through a crazy series of obstacles without dying a single time.

i've done the main story and full cleared chapter 1 and 1B, will get around to the rest at some point once i've shrunk my games-ive-bought-but-havent-played list

i legitimately think this is a 10/10 game and the best pure platformer i've ever played. everything people here were talking about when trying to sell me & others on Dark Souls applies here, about how the game patiently teaches you how to improve at it until by the end you're blasting through screens that would have looked impossible at the start. the chase/boss sequences are really intense but i found myself cruising through stretches of them purely on the instincts that the game had provided me through the design of the levels leading up to them. very cool.

also i'm playing on switch and i cannot commit to a consistent control scheme, for some things i have to use the analog stick and some things i have to use the d pad buttons. i think i'm just bad at games.

i'm playing on ps4. i have been playing with the d-pad, but my thumb is seriously sore! i had to switch to analog last night because it was just getting so painful

i use stick for that reason. my right thumb gets sore after a bit from all the jumping/dashing though. can't really marathon this for that reason.

i'd recommend climbing the whole mountain before digging into the B-sides if you want a proper ascending difficulty curve. there were a couple screens in 1B that required more precision than anything in the regular levels

glad to hear that - it's why i was holding off. i didn't want to exhaust myself trying to beat the amped up versions of the normal levels before checking out rest of the game

really loving the mirror chapter, which i wasn't enjoying as much at first.

i am such a stan for this game right now

i beat the mirror chapter with only 338 deaths! beat THAT

I just beat Mirror Temple (chapter 5). for some reason I was compelled to grind out 2B yesterday. I died well over 1000 times!

This is a total 10/10 goty masterpiece, an apogee of the genre. It hooks right into your brain and wires you up to the analog stick, training you to be capable of precision you wern’t before. Who knows, after beating this game I might be able to do a quarter circle forward.

tim rogers said this game had the best jump he had ever experienced. i don't know if it tops SMB3, but it's right up there. when you play you ARE celeste (wait...is the main character celeste? i'm not even sure)

Celeste is the mountain

but maybe the mountain is the character too, in a way

*bong rip*

you guys have completely sold me on this but i'm afraid it's not good for me to do this on the switch... maybe ps4 is the better bet?

I've been playing on the Switch Pro controller, and it's taking me some effort to get used to it, but the game does seem to do a pretty good job at throwing you new challenges that at first seem impossible but, slowly but surely, become achievable. And then it starts all over again with the next screen. As I posted to the Switch thread, right now I can't imagine playing more than 20 minutes or so at a stretch, which means only 12949439 deaths or so.

got this last night for ps4 and yeah, super fun

also agree that it's a 20-30min max type deal for me

same on all points and ditto but the stress is pretty great. I suck at this.

karl have u considered that maybe the mountain is us

*stares vacantly into middle distance*

Haha, yeah right after posting that I progressed a bit more and there was a nice conversation about the mountain. Now I know that the mountain is Taum Sauk Mountain, in Missouri.

i'm about to dive back in for the ...6th chapter? not sure what i'm up to. for some reason this is more of a 2-3 hours at a time kind of game for me. i'm playing dark souls 3, too, and it's interesting to go back and forth between the two styles of YOU DIED. the dark souls version can be more heartbreaking (and hard to bounce back from) when the tough part is a boss fight that takes a couple minutes to reach in the first place. it's nice in Celeste to just regenerate in the same spot and give it another shot a second or two later. so far i haven't hit any rooms that take longer than 5 minutes or so to get through, and a lot of them i'm able to just push my way through first time on some sort of crazy intuitive hellride like ciderpress mentioned above:

the chase/boss sequences are really intense but i found myself cruising through stretches of them purely on the instincts that the game had provided me through the design of the levels leading up to them. very cool.

ps sleepingbag i just noticed "ad roominum" in your post above, lol

https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/7tuubc/hey_were_the_dev_team_behind_celeste_ask_us/

wow. just made it to the end! i finished in just a touch under 11 hours

there's a certain kind of fun to be had with the kinds of AAA games that have enormous sandbox areas and a million sidequests in addition to the main storyline. but i feel like the end state those kinds of games lead to is exhaustion. you tackle as many sidequests as you can until you've had enough, then quit or take on the final mission. after all that work and time and effort (and some fun, sometimes), you just kind of stick a fork in it.

NOT SO with celeste. jfc, the end game amps up the intensity (not necessarily the difficulty) so much it's unbelievable! there is a boss showdown that is just O_O.
there's all sorts of stuff to do and go back to. i haven't done any of the b-sides.

i can think of only two criticisms for this game.
1) it makes my thumb hurt
2) i wish it had a simple map showing which rooms you've visited and their entrances/exits

that's it. wow. *howls at the moon*

just read this short little interview here: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/01/feature_conquering_the_indie_mountain_with_celeste_creator_matt_makes_games

What does the future hold for Celeste?

Hopefully, a game that people remember and come back to fondly. I don't think we have any plans to create a sequel to Celeste - it really feels like we told the story we wanted to tell.

fuck yeah, that's what i'm talking about. make a perfect game, then drop the mic and go to the next one

https://www.instagram.com/TheoUnderStars/

Madeleine. Celeste. Coincidence in a game about time and memory, or are there any -or any more obvious - proust references?

Wondering whether to buy this - is it fun, or is it too twitchy/tense to count as relaxing?

I've just been replaying 10,000,000 (not a platform game) but that's about as breakneck as I can handle a modern game before I stop finding it fun

As I observed, it's weirdly chill, almost zen-like, despite being so stressful. Context counts, I guess?

It makes my hands sweat

It is really unbelievable how often you die on this game. And crazy that I'll pass a room first try, and then take twenty tries on my next run through it

the rooms are small enough and the reset times after death so quick that its not stressful really, and you feel satisfied after finally figuring out a room

i was feeling really good about trying to 100% the game. i went back and got all the strawberries for chapters 1 and 2, completed their b-sides, recorded 0 death runthroughs (2:35 and 3:31 respectively)

but shiiiit the difficulty does ramp up a bit for chapter 3. i managed to find all the strawberries but i'm not sure i'll ever be able to do a 0 death run (which is important to me for some reason)

Wow that's crazy

I got to the windy level and my internal rating for this game dropped from a 10/10 to an 8/10

Windy level can go fuck itself

I stopped even thinking about the strawberries on this level

windy level was my least favorite, but chapter 5 is better. and then everything to the end is just O_O (i thought)

You guys are nuts. I hadn't really touched it since the day I bought it, but was playing tonight and there was one screen on chapter 1 - yes, near the very beginning - that was kicking my ass so hard I was convinced my controller was broken and was even googling known issues. Eventually I found someone on youtube, and yeah, I was literally never going to figure out this screen, but the dude's play did help me realize what I was doing wrong. For some reason either I didn't know or had forgotten that you can only dash once before landing on ground, which means you can only *jump* off things you're clinging to, not *dash* off them (right?). However, you can just jump into the void and *then* dash. Just once, though, unless you get one of those recharging things.

Anyway, I'm old and my thumbs hurt.

"I'm old and my thumbs hurt" is what how this game is meant to make you feel

Anybody I've shown it to under 30 is like "lol you are old, we don't know how to play this kind of shit"

i finally figured out how to stream on twitch from my ps4 (i had weird microphone issues), so i'm going to work on the chapter 3 b-side in a sec. or start to figure out how to do it quickly without dying

in case anyone is incredibly bored tonight. i'm all by myself tonight and my dog has already been taken out, so this is going to be a wednesday night epiiiic stream

https://www.twitch.tv/weinventyou

Watched for a little while. Those levels look pretty hard!

they are intensely hard! room 4 of ch. 3 b-side now

ok WHOA, say what you want about the windy level, but the crystal heart for it is the beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeest of all time. i have never thought so highly of a collectible.

only like four strawberries in but this is very nice

Karl, I watched yr videos (I've never watched Twitch before!), that looks intense

I think I may regrettably have to accept that, if I struggled to even beat the first boss on Shovel Knight, Celeste may not be the Game For Me

Yeah Karl has cured me of my thirst for this :/

Oh shit

I saw that crystal heart (vanilla run through) but I didn't know how to jump up to it and gave up

Whoops?

fwiw the vanilla levels are not nearly as hard as the ones karl is playing there

Oh yeah, I was mainly working on the chapter 3 b-side and that was intense. It took about 500-600 deaths to get through!

Andrew I feel bad if I ruined it for you! ciderpress is right about the vanilla game not being nearly so hard. The first chapter in particular is a gem of level design, gradually teaching the skills of the game to newcomers. If I have time later tonight I’d be happy to do a leisurely chapter one strawberry hunt! I’ll let y’all know here if I do.

fgti

Let’s just say that to get to it you have to think about the game’s influences. I couldn’t believe it when it actually worked!

No I get that - I am a 100%er, so I have to think about these before comitting (and anyway I have a looong backlist even in just this genre - re-united with my Wii-U after a while and I've still got Mario Galaxy 2 let alone the two Wii-U Marios and the Rayman).

oh, i gotcha. i am generally not a 100%er. i end up quitting most games long before i reach the end, let alone all the collectibles. i think i'm gonna give 100% a shot on this game a shot, but it's going to be rough.

fwiw the vanilla levels are not nearly as hard as the ones karl is playing there

But they're still really hard! A lot harder than Shovel Knight.

Fuck I just saw a walkthrough and I literally thought "SMB3" when I saw that white box and should've tried that very thing

Godammit this game is very clever and good

Beat chapter 8 last night, some great new mechanics in that level

Karl when will u stream again

oh man, i still haven't even gotten access to chapter 8! i only have 2 of the crystal hearts.

i might actually have a go this afternoon! so far i have all the strawberries in the first 4 chapters, and the b-sides for the first 3. working on the b-side for the 4th. i was also able to record zero-death runs for the first three chapters, but i'm not sure if i'll ever be able to do it for chapter 4. shit is hard.

on a related note, the music for the 4th chapter b-side is my favorite of the game so far.

if i had more energy and willpower and research and writing abilities i would write an enormous essay on endlessly looping music, including stuff like hold music for insurance companies but primarily as it's used in video games. the ch. 4 b-side theme is not the best example of what i'm thinking because it is more of just a really long kickass song with identifiable movements that is made to seamlessly loop. but sometimes in other games i'll enter the pause menu, or the title screen, and spend some time appreciating the really thoughtful loop that someone has created for the purpose. it is it's own genre, i think, and it deserves more recognition.

fyi after you complete all the regular levels and b sides you unlock golden strawberries which you get from deathless runs, idk if they're retroactive so you might want to hold off on those

oh shit, thank you! i will hold off on attempting deathless runs for the rest of the chapters, then.

are you working on 100% completing the game ciderpress? how far are you?

I'm not going for 100% anytime soon, haven't finished the b sides yet

Karl what's your twitch name?

I don't have the means to stream myself, but if I could i'd totally kick the shit out of link to the past for y'all

i am weinventyou on twitch

and yeah, that would be awesome! i have gotten 3/4 of the way through LTTP so many times, but never beaten it ;_;

evan if you ever have questions about the streaming stuff, just let me know. i am very much an amateur but i struggled through a lot of technical issues when i first started and might be able to point you in the right direction at least.

streaming pc games is simple, i have no clue how to stream from a switch though

i assume you need a video card that has hdmi in, which mine doesn't

at least on ps4, streaming is built into it - i just hit the share button, connect it to my twitch, and i'm pretty much ready to go. not sure about switch > twitch, though

streaming pc games is simple

i found streaming mac games to be not nearly as simple as i thought it would be, although i am also a bumbling fool in general. my biggest issue was with sound, specifically with routing the correct audio channels to the stream while still being able to hear everything locally. it sounds like it would be easy but for me it involved a combo of OBS, wavtap, soundflower, and multi-output settings in my sound preferences

ah I only have experience with windows that must be it

evan if you ever have questions about the streaming stuff, just let me know. i am very much an amateur but i struggled through a lot of technical issues when i first started and might be able to point you in the right direction at least.

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, February 7, 2018 11:56 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I appreciate that! My main deterrent is that my wife would probably get really worried that I was starting to go down some alarming LTTP speed running rabbit hole. We're fascinated and horrified by some of the career streamers we see grinding games for 6+ hours straight. Just seems unhealthy. Of course I wouldn't do that, nor is it inevitable. The closest I've come to streaming was sharing my screen during a skype call so a friend overseas could watch me play a LTTP randomizer.

ok, working on ch4 b-side now

You guys are total pros. I have hit two points in the first chapter or whatever - Forbidden City? - that have totally stumped me. The first I had to figure out by watching some online play through, this second one ... I hope it doesn't come to that, but I have no idea how to even leave the screen I'm on. Found my first b-side cassette, though.

i keep thinking i have reached the end of the b-side, and there's another screen

cloud jump/boost mechanics are always my achilles heel, ever since SMB3, so the stages which depend on them are total nightmares for me

OK, took me about 3 hours and almost 1000 deaths ... to finish the first chapter! With just 6 strawberries, too. On the other hand, I did it!

just breathe, you can do this

tell that to my thumb

lol, yeah my thumb hurts as well. i tried the analog stick but i just can't control it as well as the d-pad.

nice job on persevering through the first chapter! believe it or not, the mechanics that you learn in that first chapter will carry you through the entire game. each chapter might add a new element to the mix, but really it's just a matter of applying the basic moves again and again (albeit in more and more tense situations).

i am going to dive back into ch. 5 in a bit - found all the strawberries, but i just need to find the tape and then *gulp* beat the b-side

I’m all analog stick on this, definitely took some training to be able to nail the diagonals consistently but I’m much worse at diagonal inputs on a dpad

PHEW. just finished the b-side of chapter 5. i didn't like the music for it! bummer. it reminds me of how much it adds to the game when it's good (which is most of the time)

ciderpress or silby or fgti or anyone else - can you pull off anything in this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fzcnDIpuZs

i can't

I just watched you beat that b-side. Thank god for fast forward. 100% otm about the music in that stage, it’s really obtrusive.

yeah, it was brutal. 667 deaths, iirc!

in general, i really like searching for all the strawberries, finding the b-sides, and the crystal hearts. the completion of the actual b-sides has been a bit more agonizing than fun. but fuck, i gotta do it

I can pull off the dash-cancel into the jump, you can do a similar thing in Towerfall. I didn’t know about the variations where you hold down and dash or dash down-diagonal and then do a boosted jump so you can have your dash back in midair.

ooh i wanna try those but unfortunately i am in a room in ch. 3 b-side that has no navigable room to jump around in and is also impossible >;(

this game is so sweet tho. i don't know if i'm necessarily still not awful at it but i've def gotten better at acting within the increments of time the game wants you to act within. i beat the main storyline in about 11hrs & got to/thru chap 8, now going back for all the everythings which i am never tempted to do in any game.

eventually settled on analog stick only, much like while playing fifa i occasionally think 'i swear i wasn't pushing in that direction' immediately after my player character careens off someway, but overall it feels a little better than d pad

I... I can't perfect world one. I have tried for an hour.

ah god I've slowed down to the rate of about 30 minutes per screen now. this is gonna go on forever.

^^^^ it took me at least 15 minutes to do 90% of the screens in the game. BUT i never got to one that i couldn't beat in a reasonable amount of time UNTIL this stupid room on b-side 3 which i've been stuck on for days

http://i63.tinypic.com/wijymh.gif

i have no idea how to do this and i've watched 3 different ppl beat it in vods. apparently you need to jump toward the very tops of all the walls so you don't waste stamina jumping/climbing up and down. but i can't really do that, i've tried hundreds of times and can't just land right on the exact spots. so i have to climb a little, and then run out of stamina right at the end. even with no stamina i might be able to make the last jump from the right side of the right upper ledge onto the right side of the one below it and then immediately off to the right and in, but... hasn't happened yet.

also i was hoping that this was near the end of the level but in the speedrun vid i clicked it turns out this is like 6 minutes into a 35 min video o_o

that said, still somehow i find the challenge of this game inviting. i don't understand why at all. i should have thrown the switch out the window ten times by now.

yikes i can see the path through there but that looks v hard to execute

beat ittttttt awwwwww yeah

the next cpl rooms were insultingly easy after that shit. also right away in the next room got that hyper-dash-double-jump thing going 1st try. i am celeste. i am the mountain.

prolly about +500 deaths in that one room tho

Loving Chapter 2. Those celestrial dash blobs are lots of fun.

Celestrial? Celestial!

The fuck? Celestrial is not even a word, why would autocorrect correct to that?

okeydokey, i have enough b-side hearts to go for the core. i'm gonna give it a try now if you want to watch me die hundreds of times
https://www.twitch.tv/weinventyou

Cleared 3B! Tried to log a full clear of chapter 1 but I missed a strawberry somewhere.

3B is the woooooist

phew, the core was hard but not impossible. a little bit over an hour, and only 367 deaths! i've seen worse

watching that was v stressful btw

I am nowhere near where some of you are at, in skill or achievement, but one of the many things I increasingly like about this game is how it pretty much encourages you to die again and again, directing you in the end to try (sometimes in desperation) to do the craziest, blind jump off a cliff thing, even though you've half suspected from the start that that's exactly what you were supposed to do in the first place.

one of the many qualities it shares with SMB3 is that you end up exploring every reachable bit of every screen, partly to look for secrets but also just to kind of check it out. it's a pleasant feeling.

This game keeps crashing my ancient PS4. :( Still fun tho

Not exactly struggling but still a little annoyed by what must be the home stretch of chapter 2, getting chased by all the shadow versions of me. I know I can beat it, it just doesn't give you much time to think, and (no joke) I think I now have a blister forming on my left thumb.

yep, you're close! the shadows are terrifying at first, but they get a lot easier after several million deaths learning a reliable path through each screen that doesn't ever double-back on itself, if that makes sense

i have 2 b-sides left, i think. i might tackle one of them in just a bit *gulp*

Huh, OK, that wasn't that bad. But here's the thing: I just completed chapter 2 with 2/3rds fewer deaths than chapter 1 and I took an hour less to do it. Was it easier or ... am I getting better?

probably the latter, i certainly did. the rest of the chapters are longer though so don't expect a downward curve

jfc the 5th screen of the ch 6 b-side is INSANE

or at least i was insanely bad at it

I was curious so I watched some youtube clip of some dude doing that chapter, and man ... that's all so crazy.

yeah, i just took a breather/gave up a minute ago. i got to the 6th or 7th screen in and my thumb was throbbing with pain. i'll try it again in a few days!

Was thinking how much more maddening this game would be with a time limit per screen.

i got through the hotel whew

game is already getting shine from speedrunners.

https://www.speedrun.com/Celeste

Any% WR (goes from new game to seeing your game time and strawberry score in the epilogue) as of this moment is 36m 52s 397ms

How do those dudes get those super-long dashes?

Also, after all this time I still can't tell: can you bounce off the spikes?

i had the same revelation. I think you can bounce off the edge of a spiked platform?

you can grab that edge, so yeah: you can prob leap off it too. gotta be pretty exact of course.

the super-long dashes (and other moves) are explained in this video, sort of

i still don't know the exact deal with the spikes. i think it's just using a dash *just* before hitting the spikes, combined with using one of the advanced jumping moves that seems to recharge your dash at the same time that jump (giving you an extra dash, in effect)

I saw that advanced movement tutorial and it might as well be in a different language talking about a different game. I just can't follow it because he speeds ahead so quickly and is constantly moving around instead of just patiently demonstrating what he is doing and what that does.

the spikes only kill you if you;'re moving in their direction. if you move orthogonal to them you can touch them and possibly wall jump off them. that's my understanding at least

I wanted to become an orthogonalist in college but i ended up moving into liberal arts

this game is otherwise p ok but games with hundreds of lines of dialogue explaining things that could have been done in dumbshow are dud dud dud

Eh, I've liked that stuff so far. Just stuff you bump into to keep you company and break up the stress.

I do agree that games rely a little too much on the " ... " dialogue.

. . .

https://i.imgur.com/rntEc3a.jpg

lmao

this game is putting callouses on my thumb

the ch 6 b-side is insanely difficult, for me at least

kinda obvious idea here but after listening to the terrible ch 6 b-side music for 45 minutes, i finally realized that i could just turn it off and leave the other SFX on. huge improvement, at least for that chapter

i'm on that one too! getting through it at an ok pace i guess compared to b-3 which was still the most frustrating part of the game for me, but yeah some rooms seem pretty ridiculous until you work out all the microtimings within these mostly huge open spaces. the music is nice! it def sounds different from the rest of the soundtrack and most of the remixes, but it's sweet, kind of reminiscent of some sonic cd music + there's a synth burbling part which pops up that sounds like this mahavishnu song which i mentioned i liked just the other day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLqAcaSXglk

soundtrack to this game is absolutely amazing on the whole, though. prob my fav game soundtrack since fez.

As soon as I saw the one weird, out-of-place white Mario 3 block I was so excited because I knew just what to do!

so satisfying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZoQ9a7oPvo&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZoQ9a7oPvo&feature=youtu.be

goddamit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZoQ9a7oPvo

i do appreciate how this game allows me to enact the role of madeline whereas in actuality i am oshiro the hotel owner

I am definitely badeline

i'm almost through all the b-sides, on chap 8 now. was def struggling on a lot of them but going through the chap 7 summit b-side tightened me up noticably, it's a super fun level because so much of it seems rough or impossible at first but by the end you're just 2x-dashing elegantly through all these complex spaces. l can't believe i was able to execute all this:

#NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/pFXmu1s2nH

— kjsdfhglasbfjd (@kjsdfhglasbfjd1) February 22, 2018

but it didn't even take that long, maybe 20-25 minutes to figure all that out and execute it. not that it wasn't v difficult but the level and the whole game up until that point leads you into it so gradually that you can incorporate the new things it's asking you to do into what you're already doing naturally enough.

really love this game! beautiful design, super fun to play. one of my favs ever.

I am no hardcore gamer. I am barely a gamer. So Celeste has been a real struggle - mostly fun, but still frustrating. I get stuck on a level (screen) that takes me 30 minutes, finally make a breakthrough, and then get to the next screen which is just as challenging. That's ok, in that it's rewarding to finally get through something, but today it sort of gave me a headache and every time I saw a strawberry I basically though, fuck you, strawberry, I have enough on my plate.

yeah, it's definitely a kind of advanced game. i'm literally resting a few days to let my thumb heal!

On the other hand (no pun intended), I haven't resorted to assist mode yet. Because what would be the point? I think psychologically this is getting me ready for Dark Souls, even though there are lots of questions re: the port's game play on the Switch.

This is harder than Dark Souls, imo

i find dark souls to be more difficult, tbh. when i last play DS3 i was stuck on a boss that i had already spent more than an hour on. so far i haven't gotten stuck on a screen in celeste for more than 30 minutes, although i'm veering close to that pretty frequently in chapter 7-B

It's probably just me! The very precise, exact motions this game demands are tougher for me, while the big 3D world in DS allows for more degrees of freedom--my "chicken shit" style of play works really well in that context, haha

Yeah, this game is just so unforgiving. The fact that it can take half an hour to figure out how to move a few inches over the course of just a couple of seconds ... you just got to do it, and even then, sometimes it's a wonder it gets done!

I think it’s a testament to this game’s quality that it seems like people across a huge range of natural skill with it are sticking with the game to the end of the story.

The design is really smart, because even if you're going to die a lot, again and again, over and over, it's fast and it's fair. It's not like you've died because some randomized swipe of a demon's tail takes out your last sliver of health of whatever.

i just finished my first playthrough. i didn't go out of my way to find strawberries but if i ran into one and thought i could pick it up i did so i ended up w/ 68. i also found one b-tape and one diamond. you guys that are going through all the b-sides - did you find them naturally or look them up? i'm trying to decide if it's worth it to find them myself or if i should just spoil it.

found a few naturally, had to look one up, and ran across an answer to another one on accident while watching someone's video on another topic.

The tapes I found some the first time through, the rest hunting based on the hint in the checkpoint selection when replaying the level. I needed some kind of hint for all the blue hearts I’ve gotten so far.

The tapes are easy to find compared to the blue hearts, if you start looking for out of the way strawberries you will find your way to the tapes too

i didn't realize until recently that there's more stuff AFTER the b-sides! like, a lot more. i will never 100% this game

Just watched a youtube guy beat a level that's killed me easily a hundred times on his first try, like it was no big deal.

Yeah, that's the worst.

Despite all my struggle I've found maybe 3 b-side cassettes so far, somehow.

I'm slowly working my way through this. Chapter 6 is gorgeous. The way that going underwater affects the score is soo nice

i LOVE that. it feels genuinely refreshing to sit at the bottom of a pond after a difficult screen

I did the first three b sides and got all the strawberries and stuff for those normal levels. I got enough hearts to unlock the cave and damn I’m like two rooms in and I have no idea

Mordy don’t you have a job and multiple small children and presumably average sleep requirements how are you banging through this so fast

My kids love watching my play :D also it really hasn’t taken so long I guess I’ve played a lot of games like this?

Aww yay

I should be amazing at this game but I fucking suck at it

I finished the 3rd stage but I'm saving this game for a travel day

i'm just about to start the summit chapter and i've only found 1 tape so far? wtf..

they tend to be pretty out of the way

ZS was right tho that if you're just exploring exhaustively you'll eventually find them (or at least the first few i haven't gotten em all yet)

I haven't played in a few days and my thumbs are still sort of numb.

i made it to the summit level let's doooo this

I've hit a spot which must be toward the end of the hotel level where I know I have to bounce up this chimney and not get hit by those moving pairs of lava things and I know I can do it and that it will take me 100 tries and ... I just don't feel like it. I'll get to it eventually.

Made it to the summit :)

the voices in this game are adorable

YOLOOOOO

I played the entire main story line without knowing any of these tricks! I figured out just the very first, easiest one on accident and thought that was cool

https://youtu.be/-fzcnDIpuZs?t=5m20s

oh my god! the last time i played i was super freaked out by these whispering voices that i couldn't make out.

MYSTERY SOLVED (voices at 1:10)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE8diav5I1k

possible spoiler: don't play that until after you've gotten through the mirror chapter

I've just about reached the point in this game where all remaining strawberries and uncompleted (i.e. b-side) levels are effectively impossible for my slow-reflexes, low-dexterity, near-middle-aged self.

Beat the core though!

Theo's instagram

https://www.instagram.com/TheoUnderStars/

did anybody watch that video about the whispering voices? i thought it was really cool, but i admit that i am weirdly into reversed whispering voices, probably too much so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvhCThWWy3Q

the end of chapter six was an incredibly hokey narrative turn visible from a mile off, but also otoh a sweet boss battle

I have now beaten the chapter 6 B side, it only took 2399 deaths

:O

i think that's where i left off with the game, halfway through it

I bought this as a treat for myself for finishing a grad school application

I am dying a lot

It is hard

I thought there'd be ten or so levels that let you into it slowly, but

Nope

It may be a perfect game but I am on an extended break (I'm as early in the game as the hotel, iirc). The game is relentlessly difficult, even if it handles dying well, though to be fair/honest I haven't tried it on the easier setting yet.

My right thumb fell off after 30 mins play

Mind you it's still easier than Ghosts N Ghouls

got through the chapter 6 b-side, damn that was rough. but was surprised that only 800-something deaths or so (lol) got tallied up at the end. cool.

loved the summit b-side, what a complete joy to play through... until those wall jumps, my GOD. third flag from the top just brought my momentum to an absolute stop. probably spent half my time for the level on this one screen. but I made it.

then the first screen of the core b-side really humbled me. now on hiatus due to travel but due to deep self-doubt.

def one of the best games ever.

i took a break a while back because my thumb was hurting so badly! think i'm healed up now, but it's gonna take a while to get back in the groove again

playing on switch & realized I needed a reasonably OK d-pad p early on. ordered an 8bitdo controller. no regrets!

anyone else not love the celestial resort stages? there's just something about the rhythmic glob maneuvering that I can never quite get a handle on.

If you can get locked in on the cycles it’s more fun.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-12-23-new-very-hard-levels-are-coming-to-celeste-in-early-2019

zs, you seen robot assisted runs? this one is particularly nuts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEcv7BD1q9o

I spent last week in bed recovering from surgery and playing Celeste.

Went from loving the story but rushing through the levels and not caring at all about strawberries to beating the game and suddenly realizing that I really really wanted to go back and get everything I missed the first time through. I can't remember the last time I felt the need to 100% a game but I'm pretty sure it was like, the first Donkey Kong Country?

Anyway, this is a great game. Looking forward to driving myself insane trying to unlock the Core level.

finally went on sale on switch btw

jfc the b sides

this game owns so hard

run one done. 2016 deaths yowch. swear a large percentage of those were on summit flag 10

I don’t know what happened with this game, but first time round I found it WAY too difficult and gave up on the fourth or fifth screen. Six months later, after a bunch of twitch-learning playing Super Mario 3 on the Switch NES emulator, I’m magically able to play and even enjoy it. It’s a great game!!! Obviously.

Although I have to be careful to play in 30 min bursts or my hand will literally die

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx5JGv0HVKp/

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-06-02-celeste-free-dlc-contains-over-100-levels

levels meaning screens - apparently that makes it about as long as the summit chapter

ahhhhhh. well that's a little confusing!

can't wait! i've been meaning for an excuse to play through the regular levels again anyway. i'll probably do it again to prepare for the DLC (which is apparently harder than any of the normal levels, but perhaps not to the level of a b-side? not sure)

chapter 6 b side

fsck me

Niiiiice

That shit is hard. I think I finished b-sides 1-5? Maybe 6?

I’ve done b sides 1-5. I’m halfway through 6. it is brutal. I swear I dropped 200 lives on one screen alone

DONE

905 deaths

can we get a report on the health of your left thumb? i think that b-side is where i had to take a break (now several months long) to heal

summit b side done. thumb in tatters

live shot of ||||||||'s thumb:

https://i.imgur.com/5Qf3he2.jpg

... and core run through done. just the core b side to do now before...

c sides

there’s A LOT of content in this game. and while it is def a 10/10 there are some mechanics I just don’t get on with (controlling the cloud jumps and the beast-head tadpole thing that flys at you, come to mind... generally all of the things that fly at you are pretty annoying)

core B side DONE

C sides unlocked

Nice, just yesterday I picked this up for the first time in a while and started working on summit B. Game’s good.

It took me a long time to get practised enough to enjoy playing this game, but it’s SO good

It reminds me of Zelda BOTW in the sense that, I feel like every other game I play like this is going to feel lacking by comparison from now on

bagged my first C side. not sure if I'll go for them all

think I'll try for the first golden strawberry and the dashless golden then maybe call it a day.... maybe

fffffffff dashless strawberry dome. how hard could it be I thought

brutal

I will never play this game (too hard) but the thread title delights me every time I see it.

the game has accessibility options that let you adjust the difficulty in a pretty granular way! I believe you can turn down the speed, add extra dashes, and turn off spike damage. Play this cool game!

the thread title delights me every time I see it.

:) i was hoping someone else would like that

I don't think this game is all that hard? The main story is quite doable. The post-summit stuff is much harder but that's your treat for completing the game.

yeah, agreed. it never felt unfairly difficult to me. well, not until one part towards the end of the summit b-side, I guess.

never made it past the first screen of the c-side resort. I think I doubled my death count on that one screen alone!

I really liked this game, but gave up on it pretty early. Maybe I'll go back to it some day.

zs, you seen robot assisted runs? this one is particularly nuts

watched this yesterday. Some of the middle section parts were truly insane. I love the bot's approach to the black blobs in the hotel.

beat 7B a week or two ago, it was A Lot.

preview track from the OST for the upcoming Chapter 9 is up

https://radicaldreamland.bandcamp.com/album/celeste-farewell-original-soundtrack

chapter 9 out now !

Celeste wasn't very interesting when I tested it. The collectable apples were annoying. The dash jump wasn't special. The story was as light as any flash game. It looked like any flash game.

Watched the speedrun and the game never got any better.

So you’re hinting that you didn’t enjoy the game

I never understood how it got so much hype

Sorry I guess. It’s probably my favorite game of all time, if such a thing is meaningful.

As someone who gave up/set it aside pretty early on, but still appreciated what I played, I think it's because it's a super-challenging platformer that isn't based on lucky bullshit, just perseverance. But I think more importantly, those rapid respawns are key. If it took just another few milliseconds to try again, people would have been pissed. (fwiw despite Hollow Knight being a personal all-time fave, I never pursued the harder post-game levels, because like Celeste I ultimately find that stuff more frustrating than fun, even when the game looks gorgeous.)

It's crazy how much work the developers must have done to create content that's only going to be seen (outside of cheats and youtube videos) by very few ultra-skilled players. I beat the game, but almost all of the B-sides, all of the C-sides and all of Chapter 9 are just impossible for me--and for a lot of other people like me, I think. I'm not complaining, though! It's just amazing that they've put so much effort into the margins

you can turn on assist mode if you want to see it!

7B was a journey

I just started playing the game and finished the first two chapters... Can anyone tell me, without spoiling too much, does anything actually happen if you collect all the strawberries? Or all the crystal hearts? Or are they there just so you can brag about having found all of them?

The game explicitly tells you that you don’t have to collect the strawberries.

Yeah, I know, but I was wondering whether collecting them unlocks some extra content or something.

strawberries are completely optional. there's a bonus level that needs some hearts to unlock but you don't need all of them iirc.

Thanks!

Chapter 9 is a motherfucker. Haven’t messed with the b-sides but I’m sure I’ll get there before the end of the holiday.

And there are C-Sides? Curious how the difficulty stacks up against Chapter 9, which I am struggling with but chipping away at. Undeniably great platformer, really keeps me coming back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sJkEWlyk74

https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=100323

I’m on chapter 2 of this and it’s GREAT, actual sweaty palms stuff, got both bsides but few strawberries, but sometimes you just can’t be fucked, you know?

likewise hooked on this, so many indelible touches around pretty flawless level design. 100% strawberries so far

Got back into playing this. Wasn't 100% feeling this but now I've got to Oshiro's hotel, I'm loving it.
However, I have a bad habit of getting really far, then rage quitting and forgetting to save my game!
All the same, it's wonderful how you can spend ages and ages and ages simply trying to get past the first obstacle on a screen, and then suddenly it comes so naturally you can do the whole thing in one fluid motion. Reminds me of learning a tricky piece on an instrument.

I cannot be bothered with most strawberries though

Yeah it's a satisfying feeling, like you just gained a new skill in life, have you tried 1001 Spikes? It's full of that sort of experience. Dick rippingly frustrating mind.

Oh man the strawberries in the hotel are what put me off the game!

Also I do not understand B-sides, and have only found one so far.

b-sides unlock another version of that level that is EVEN HARDER!

(there's also c-sides)

:D strawberries are my favorite part of the game. they're totally optional! they're similar to modern day marios where every level has a handful of yoshi coins that really are more just for completionists

also LOVE the strawberries. i had to get every last one. they are optional and don’t amount to much in the end but encourage you to explore and really get familiar with each stage.

i tapped out on the c-sides a while ago and now i feel old and out of shape. booted up the new DLC from earlier this year and that was a rude awakening to be sure.

I have been really enjoying this. Mostly just picking it up, clearing 1–3 screens, then saving and putting it back down. A great way to scratch that video game itch with my short attention span.

Love it, been stuck in mirror temple for about a year now

I whizzed through a whole bunch of this a few weeks ago but gave up around the windy levels

picked this back up and are being eaten by a fish in the mirror level. gonna carry on tomorrow when my red raw thumb recovers.

fuck a s/berry tho, I've never been a completionist. just wanna see how Madeline's story ends.

also, it turns out streaming on twitch concentrates my mind and gives me sufficient gee-up to persevere.

this game is fkn tough

just started a game called Olija, which is a bit like Celeste meets Castlevania but with more of a puzzle element than fast-twitch action. Feeling it so far!

started playing this today and uh it says i died 341 times on the hotel level. my thumb hurts so much.

oh my god the fucking mirror level

i gave up on the wind levels. great game but life is too short

Turn on assist mode! The end of the game is so nice 😭

Turn on assist mode!

^^^

also relevant for people struggling with hades

Celeste's dialogue design is the #1 most-asked-about topic when it comes to the game's sound. I figured I'd share some of how we went about creating it. pic.twitter.com/HVpRdvlfAD

— Kevin Regamey (@regameyk) July 17, 2021

That's neat. I personally like the emotive gibberish of "Hollow Knight."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekz4-SNVJjU

bafanada

another celeste mario ("hastily made with levels designed within two months"), nice humblebrag:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbQmiDDAx3A

Now in 3 dimensions!

https://maddymakesgamesinc.itch.io/celeste64

Looks sick!