Celeste

Celeste is a wonderful platformer. It's not a metroidvania like some others I'm reviewing, but it still fulfills that action-adventure flavor. Celeste distills platforming down to its essentials by relying solely on jumping and dashing as its mechanics. The rest is all the varied mechanics of the particular levels. It's interesting and fun stuff.

Celeste belongs to the "masocore" style of games that revel in the sheer number of times people die over and over attempting to complete it ("masocore" is a portmanteau of masochist and hardcore). It's not well known as an approachable genre. But Celeste really tries to change that.

A good section of the game is reserved for completionists. Each level has strawberries you can collect as well as some specific objects like the "B-side" cassette tape. The B-Side unlocks an uber-hard version of the level. Then there's a 8-bit version of Celeste that you find and you can try to complete that. There's basically just a lot of side-content. So you're not that pressured to try every challenge and do every possible thing. The main game already has plenty of challenge.

Celeste also is surprisingly kind to the player. It seems to be very aware that it's quite hard and gives the player plenty of encouragement to try again or take a break. I don't think I've seen a game do that with the ease that Celeste does it.

The story is that you're a mountain climber who is climbing a mountain that gets more dangerous and difficult as you go along. It's strangely meta, and the conversations where Celeste is questioning why she's bothering with something so hard seem to be more directed at the player than the character. It's clever and refreshing.

The art is pixel-based, but there is more cartoon-y art for the conversations. I like the blend, it works very well.

Celeste is not for everyone, but you won't know it's for you unless you try it. It's a lot of fun, and its style of being nice to you is something you don't see a lot in games.