Celeste (video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  Celeste began as a weekend experiment. In August 2015, Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry built a small mountain-climbing game for the PICO-8, a fantasy video game console, in just three days. They titled the prototype Everest. Three years later, a much larger version reached players as a 2018 platform game from the indie studio Maddy Makes Games. Some video game journalists now rank it among the greatest games ever made. How does a three-day sketch grow into that? Why does a game built around jumping and dashing keep circling back to anxiety and depression? And how did its creators make a game that expert speedrunners and struggling beginners could both finish?

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• 2. The Climb

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  Eight directions are all the freedom Madeline gets when she dashes in mid-air. Alongside that dash, she can run, jump, scale walls for a limited time, and wall jump. Green gems refill her dash without touching the ground. Dream blocks carry her across when she dashes into them. Moving blocks pass their momentum to her, bubbles push her along, and some platforms start moving after a dash.

  The base game has eight chapters, each broken into single-screen challenges with checkpoints between them. Branching paths lead to optional trials and hidden prizes. These include strawberries, cassette tapes, and crystal hearts, which open gates inside levels. Finding a chapter's hidden cassette tape unlocks its B-side, a tougher remix of the same mechanics. Finish all eight B-sides and the shorter, even harder C-sides appear.

  Thorson wanted a minimal moveset that captured the feeling of bouldering. That goal explains Madeline's limited stamina on walls, which the vertical mountain setting made even more important. Super Mario Bros. 3, from 1988, was the game that inspired Thorson most, especially in how it approached problem-solving. Metroid, Donkey Kong Country 2, and Kero Blaster also shaped the design. Because the controls needed to be so precise, the developers skipped a ready-made physics engine, so they could decide outcomes in specific situations themselves. They also chose pixel art because they felt it conveyed information to the player clearly, and because they already knew the style well. Throughout development, the team kept adjusting Madeline's attributes and redesigning levels.

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• 3. Fair Difficulty

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  Coyote time is named after Wile E. Coyote, the Looney Tunes character who hangs in midair until he notices there is no ground beneath him. In Celeste, the same trick gives players a brief moment to jump after running off a ledge. The team wanted the game to feel hard but fair, so they cut or changed anything that seemed unfairly punishing. They favored matching what a player meant to do over demanding near-perfect execution.

  Several other mechanics work the same way. A jump pressed slightly before landing still counts. Corners are effectively rounded so players do not clip them. A wall jump works even when Madeline is slightly away from the wall. These tools let the game play as hardcore or forgiving, depending on who holds the controller.

  The team also built difficulty into the structure. Strawberries and B-sides raise the challenge, while Assist Mode lowers it. Thorson described the mode as a counterbalance to those optional extras. It offers a slower game speed, unlimited dashes, or invincibility for Madeline. The idea came from watching the public argument over Cuphead in 2017, when many players called that game too unforgiving. The feature was first called Cheat Mode, but Thorson thought the name judged players too harshly, so she renamed it. She said it arrived late in development. Berry said it took only a couple of days to build, though balancing the whole game took extensive playtesting. Even so, challenges later in the game still demand far more precision than the early ones.

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• 4. Madeline And Badeline

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  At the foot of Celeste Mountain, an elderly woman named Granny tells Madeline not to climb it. Madeline ignores her. The mountain is a fictional version of a real one, and it seems haunted. In an abandoned city she meets Theo, a traveler from Seattle who is obsessed with social media. Later, in a nightmare, she finds a reflection of herself in a mirror. This is Badeline, who embodies her anxiety and depression. Badeline calls herself Madeline's pragmatic part, and says she will keep Madeline from climbing before she is ready.

  At the Celestial Resort, an abandoned hotel, Madeline meets Oshiro, a ghost who owns it. He cannot leave his past behind and lives in denial. He pleads with her to stay and fix up the failing hotel, and she agrees. Then Badeline appears and mocks him, claiming Madeline only helped to feed her own ego. Oshiro believes this, flies into a rage, and drives Madeline out.

  After a windy stretch, Madeline reaches Theo at a gondola lift. Badeline stops the gondola, and Madeline has a panic attack. Theo helps her calm down. At an ancient temple, Theo becomes trapped in a crystal until Madeline frees him. Their conversation gives her the confidence to confront Badeline and say she wants to be rid of her. In response, Badeline hurls her down the mountain.

  Granny then suggests that Madeline look for resolution rather than abandonment. Madeline chases Badeline, apologizes, and the two reconcile and vow to climb together. At the summit, they share a strawberry pie with Granny, Theo, and Oshiro.

  The story continues a year later, when Madeline and Granny set out to explore the mountain's core. They grow close before Granny dies. After visiting Granny's grave, Madeline spots a mysterious bird, believes it is Granny reincarnated, and pursues it through space. Badeline objects and leaves her to chase it alone. When Badeline returns, she warns that Madeline is dreaming and must wake up. Madeline refuses at first, then gives in and decides to free the bird. In a cloud-filled place she meets Granny and apologizes for missing her funeral. The final scene is a video call with Theo, who reveals that Granny was friends with his grandfather.

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• 5. A Personal Story

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  Thorson reached a "breaking point" during development, when her depression and anxiety became too severe to ignore. Until then, the team had little direction for the story. They only knew they wanted something more introspective than TowerFall, and they took inspiration from Studio Ghibli films such as Spirited Away, from 2001. Thorson wanted to explore her own struggles in the game. Building a narrative around them was hard, because those struggles continued while she worked.

  The team did not consult mental health professionals. They wrote from their own experiences alone. The result is a story that feels personal and relatable, rather than one claiming to represent mental illness in general. The developers were surprised by how large a role the story came to play. They delayed the game to "do the story justice", to tie it properly to the gameplay, and to make Madeline's experiences mirror the player's.

  The ending stayed undecided for most of development. Thorson knew Madeline would fall down the mountain before reaching the top, but not how to frame it. She eventually chose to show that reaching the summit does not make things "magically better". Madeline's attempt to defeat her anxiety by forcing her other self into submission was the wrong approach. She has to learn to live alongside it.

  Thorson later said she was "in the process of discovering her queerness" while making the game. As a result, the story carried queer undertones she had not intended. She would say much more about those undertones in 2020.

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• 6. Soundtrack

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  Lena Raine called "In The Mirror" one of the strangest tracks she has ever composed. Its heavy synthesizer sequences recall Vangelis and the 1982 film Blade Runner, and they were meant to match the "cosmic horrors" Madeline faces. The track also contains Raine's own voice, playing Madeline's internal dialogue in reverse to suit the mirror theme. She wanted a sound that was nearly unintelligible in the background, so she recorded herself in a dark closet, trying to voice what she related to in Madeline's struggles.

  Raine composed most of the soundtrack. Additional composers remixed her music for most of the B-side levels. Her score even shaped the visual design of some levels. Sound designer Kevin Regamey added effects that mirrored the gameplay, and Raine then layered "musical ambience" on top.

  Every major character has an instrument. Madeline is a piano, Badeline a synthesizer, Theo a guitar, and Oshiro a "theremin-like" synthesizer. Granny is the exception, because Raine said she "embodies the power of the mountain" and is a nearly constant presence. Badeline's theme first appears in "Resurrections" and returns in several other tracks, always in a minor key. Madeline's theme is mostly cheery and only sometimes turns minor. For "Resurrections", Raine created an "othering" sound that moves away from the simpler melody of "First Steps", fitting a lucid dream. In "Anxiety", she tried to capture a panic attack by letting the synthesizer swallow the piano that stands for Madeline. Raine says she tries to "inject some part" of herself into every musical project.

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• 7. Release And Reception

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  In July 2016, Celeste was announced, and Thorson and Berry livestreamed their work on Twitch. The following month, a demo was playable at the Indie Megabooth at PAX West. The team first hoped to release in 2017 as a launch title for the Nintendo Switch in March, but by December 2016 the target had moved to mid-2017. A full trailer arrived in February 2017, and in April the team began an Instagram account written in character as Theo. His selfies form a prelude, covering his backstory and his trip to the mountain.

  Celeste came out on the 25th of January 2018 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, macOS, and Linux. Xbox One followed the next day. Google Stadia got it after an announcement on the 9th of July 2020. Madeline and Badeline also appeared as crossover characters in the Switch version of TowerFall on the 27th of September 2018. Sales grew steadily. The game sold over 500,000 units in 2018, with the Switch version reportedly the most popular. It reached a million copies by March 2020 and 1.7 million as of January 2025. The soundtrack was streamed more than 4 million times on Spotify that first year.

  Critics received it warmly. Metacritic reported "universal acclaim" on consoles and "generally favorable reviews" on PC, while OpenCritic found 99 percent of critics recommended it. IGN called it a "surprise masterpiece". Eurogamer wrote that everything in the game "speaks of care and attention". Polygon said players felt "in complete control" of the movement at all times. Rock Paper Shotgun said Assist Mode solved the problem of difficulty "so elegantly that everyone should be paying attention". Kotaku wrote that "Anxiety" captured "the feeling of true anxiety".

  Not every note was glowing. Paste called the story's execution "a little awkward" and said the game worked better as a game than as an exploration of mental illness. Shacknews found the boss sequences "irksome". Awards followed anyway. Polygon ranked it the fifth best game of 2018, USgamer ranked it second, and Ars Technica named it the year's best game overall. Another business story hid behind the praise. Materia Collective later bought the music's publishing rights, and the composers of the B-side music then went without royalties for 17 months.

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• 8. Community And Legacy

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  Kevin Regamey, the sound designer, is a speedrunner himself, and he helped shape how Celeste treats the practice. Techniques that speedrunners discovered were formally added to the game in updates. Thorson said the team wanted the best players to keep finding new tricks that less skilled players could use too. The developers adjusted mechanics subtly, so the feeling of "breaking" the game survived, and they talked with community members while doing it. Players also built custom levels using mods. USgamer called the community "a huge part of Celeste's success".

  On the 9th of September 2019, the free Farewell expansion arrived. Its epilogue showed a pride flag and a transgender pride flag on Madeline's desk. Some fans took this as proof that Madeline was a trans woman, while others disagreed. One critic noted that the ambiguity itself made the debate possible. Critic Laura Dale argued it was not good representation, because the signs were too weak to prevent denial. A year later, Thorson wrote that Madeline was definitely trans, and she apologized to fans hurt by the creators' silence. Kotaku wrote that the game drew an audience that was "undeniably queer".

  Farewell began development after a long break, alongside the team's next project, Earthblade. It started as a set of extremely difficult levels and grew into a new chapter that continues the story. Raine returned to score it. Thorson said the free release was only possible because Celeste had done so well financially. The chapter has no B-side or C-side. It adds grabbable jellyfish that work like parachutes, exploding pufferfish that launch Madeline, and "double-dash" gems. Kotaku called it "the perfect capstone".

  The creators have said no to a full sequel. Thorson wrote in 2022 that she did not want to make Celeste again or be who she was when making it. Still, they made small spin-offs. Celeste 2: Lani's Trek, released on the 26th of January 2021, was built in three days by Thorson, Berry, and Raine for the PICO-8. It stars a new character, Lani, who uses a grappling hook. Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain followed in January 2024, a short three-dimensional game inspired by the Nintendo 64 that continues the narrative. In 2022, USA Today ranked Celeste the fourteenth best game of all time.

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