Celeste
| Celeste | |
|---|---|
 Celeste's cover artwork, depicting Madeline's pursuit of abnormally large strawberries | |
| Developer(s) | Extremely OK Games |
| Platform(s) | PC, consoles |
| Genre | Platformer |
Celeste is a platformer video game developed and published by Extremely OK Games, which, as its name implies, is Extremely OK. Players (usually) play as Madeline, a young and notably cute woman climbing Celeste Mountain in order to collect the numerous extremely OK (and very large) strawberries found on it. She encounters various people during this climb, such as an unusually intelligent and strong bird, a personification of some unknown part of herself intent on preventing her ridiculous collection of strawberries, and a ghost trying to make her take a rest from collecting strawberries.
Gameplay[edit | edit source]
Celeste is a two-dimensional platformer where players usually play as Madeline. Madeline is initially able to run, jump, climb walls for a limited time, and dash once in mid-air. This dash is commonly mistaken for a double jump, and is the reason the myth of transgender people being able to double jump exists; in reality, trans people are able to dash in a similar manner to Madeline, which is much cooler.
Celeste's levels consist of eight chapters with three different "sides", two of which are purely more difficult versions of the first which serve as side content and a way for Madeline to collect crystal hearts which we really don't know anything about. It also has one "Farewell", a super difficult final chapter taking place inside Madeline's dreams all so she can collect a final "Moon Berry".
Plot[edit | edit source]
The game's plot has Madeline arrive at Celeste Mountain, a magical and very difficult mountain, to collect its very large and delicious strawberries. Upon going to sleep next to an old site and discovering that she can pull strawberries out of her own dreams, she meets an adorable goth Part of Her who seeks to stop her absurd collection of strawberries. This Part of Her, nicknamed "Badeline" by the Celeste community of strawberry collection enthusiasts, attempts to chase Madeline down to stop her, but Madeline is a speedrunner and too fast to be chased by most people.
Along the way in the mountain, Madeline meets and befriends Theo, a comparatively normal person here to photograph the mountain and not collect very large strawberries. He teaches her a feather-related breathing technique which Madeline later manifests as literal golden feathers allowing her to fly temporarily. He later gets stuck in a crystal while trying to photograph a "Mirror Temple" that barely contains mirrors in it, and has to be carried out by the somehow very strong Madeline. Even here, there are (somehow) strawberries, and Madeline immediately decides to show off her platforming skills to collect them.
Badeline by this point is very tired and has been entirely left behind at the old site. Fortunately for Badeline, it is impossible to outrun yourself, and she climbs up the mountain while Madeline is asleep in order to confront herself and stop Madeline's strawberry collection. In desperation, tiredness, stars, and time, she throws Madeline to the mountain's rock bottom, a place with absolutely no strawberries at all.
[to be written]
At the Epilogue of Celeste's story, Madeline displays the previously unseen ability to compress up to 202 strawberries, moon and golden berries included, into a single regular pie-sized pie, which becomes more delicious the more strawberries are used to create it. How Madeline brings a strawberry from her dreams into reality is also unknown.
Further strawberry-collecting escapades (speedrunning and game mods)[edit | edit source]
Though Madeline does not gain any new abilities in Celeste itself (aside from a second air dash), she is able to use these abilities to access esoteric movement techniques of the sort one would see in speedrunning, as she is a speedrunner. Examples include wavedashing, where she dashes diagonally down and jumps to perform a sort of wave-like dash which is inexplicably fast, demodashes, where Madeline squishes herself in order to fit through small gaps in deadly spikes using a dash, and neutral jumps, where she jumps away from walls and then moves towards them in air to "climb" up. This somehow preserves her stamina despite being a far more physically demanding movement than simply climbing.
Mods of Celeste feature even more adventures for Madeline to go through, meaning more strawberries to collect. One of the most famous examples involves Madeline going to all sorts of places to collect the (still strangely large and delicious) strawberries found there and once again compress them into the ultimate Strawberry Jam. Another has Maddy find strawberries in her mind once more, even while in a coma. Yet another has her climb a far more dangerous "forsaken trail" of Celeste all to hunt more berries. Due to Madeline's ability to reform herself upon death (which always happens by explosion somehow), we can only assume that her pursuit of strawberries has no end.
See also[edit | edit source]
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