Celeste
The heroine of the platformer Celeste can jump, cling to walls for a short while and dash through the air in any of eight directions. With that kit she climbs a mountain split into challenges one screen long. The climber is a young woman living with anxiety and depression, and on the way up a double of hers, the embodiment of her self-doubt, tries to stop her.
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Celeste started as a prototype that Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry built in a few days in August 2015 for PICO-8, a fantasy game console.
The difficulty bends to you. A separate mode slows the game down, gives unlimited dashes or makes you invincible. It was first called Cheat Mode, but Thorson felt the name was judgmental, and it became Assist Mode. The team decided to add it after the arguments around Cuphead, which many players found too hard.
At The Game Awards 2018 Celeste won Best Independent Game and Games for Impact. Critics praised how it handles difficulty, though one reviewer found too little reason to hunt for collectibles and another was annoyed by the unpredictable boss sequences. Players give it 97% positive across 134,204 reviews, critics 88 on Metacritic. In our Recommended Score it ranks 47 of 4,736 games.
Liked it? Try Super Meat Boy, which many reviewers compared Celeste to, and VVVVVV, where you can't jump at all and can only flip gravity.
System requirements
Minimum Intel HD Graphics 4000 · 2 GB RAM · 1.2 GB✓Steam Deck VerifiedMin & recommended
| Minimum | |
|---|---|
| OS | Windows 7 or newer |
| Processor | Intel Core i3 M380 |
| Memory | 2 GB |
| Graphics | Intel HD 4000 |
| DirectX | 10 |
| Storage | 1.2 GB |
From the game’s Steam store page.
