Celeste and the Celebration of Progress Through Death
I have died 3464 times so far, and I’m hoping for more
In every game I’ve ever played, death is annoying. No positive feelings follow death, because death highlights your failure. Death is there because you have lost, and the giant “GAME OVER” is there to remind you of your loss. In Souls-like games, for example, death is practically a game mechanic, the key and focal characteristic of this genre. You must suffer until you’re skilled enough to kill the next boss. You will die early and often, restarting far away from your last battle so you have the time to think about your mistakes on the path back to your demise.
Just to be clear, this is a really good thing. Giving depth to death is what made the Souls-like genre so successful, trial-and-error full of cruelty, building skill from utter despair.
Consider Celeste as the opposite of the Souls genre.
Celeste is careful. Celeste is a caress. Celeste hugs you. Celeste is a high mountain that challenges you to climb it, not to let you give up but to improve yourself. Death after death, you learn to welcome each one for the lessons that accompany them. There is never a “GAME OVER” on our screen because the game is never over.
Diving In
I didn’t care about Celeste until I found it as part of Stadia Pro free games. I wasn’t sure what I would find; I had heard terrific things about the game but all I knew for sure was the pixel art graphics that are part of the game’s charm.
So I started playing to understand what Celeste really was. It took just a few short moments to get a feel for how it works: you control Madeline with eight directions of movement, plus you can jump, dash (just one time until you land on the ground!), and grab walls. Easy enough, or so it seemed.
As I played the first few levels, I soon learned two more things: you can die, and if you die you will restart at the beginning of the nearest screen to where you perished. So dying is not a major problem, you just restart, ready to try again, with nothing lost and valuable lessons gained about what to do next.
I pushed ahead, interacting with various obstacles, and in just 18 minutes I had completed the first chapter. Dying 62 times, more than three deaths per minute, which seems like a lot without context. But the funny thing is that I didn’t feel any frustration about my failures. Because the time to restart and apply what you learned in death is so short, I didn’t even notice that I was dying so often.
Moving forward with the game, I quickly realized that Celeste is damned hard, and my first 62 deaths would pale in comparison to how many times I would be defeated in the next chapters. In Chapter 7 (the second to last chapter) alone, I suffered 753 deaths in 2 hours and 20 minutes of gameplay.
Why so many deaths?
There is a specific reason you die so often, and it’s the same reason dying isn’t the annoyance it is in so many games, and actually feels great!
To explain that, I have to clarify what Celeste really is. It’s not just a platformer. It’s a rhythm game. It’s a dance between you and every level.
The main reason I can say this with absolute confidence is that gameplay is extremely accurate. Input lag is close to zero, so you need just to think, “jump!”, and press A, and Madeline, the main character, is already one meter above the ground. Secondly, chapters are split into levels, and every level is a chamber divided by the next ones. This allows the game to be fully scripted: you will never deal with an out of place enemy or a suspicious flying bullet. Everything is exactly where it is supposed to be.
So, when you enter in a level for the first time, from the tiniest and easiest to the largest and hardest, you already know that you need to pull off a specific succession of movements to reach your goal. A choreography of movement, indeed. And in advanced chapters, you spend most of your time perfecting your movements at the best. Jumping from the edge or just before, makes a difference; dash at maximum height or ten milliseconds after, makes a difference; every choice, every split-second timing, makes a difference. And if you fail, it’s your fault. The game always plays fair.
However, in the title, I mention that I’m hoping for even more deaths in Celeste.
Since you most assuredly will often die a lot before finding the right movements to go further, when you understand what should be the right way, you will just keep trying and trying. Actually, after death, you’ll begin with the stick already pushed to retry in zero time. As in a Souls-like, the key is trial and error and you know that if you don’t die, you won’t succeed. So you need to die and die, and every death gets you close to the end. You can feel it! You can feel your improvement go further. So yes, dying makes you feel damn good and gives you a sense of accomplishment that will push you to continue!
I haven’t finished the game yet and I’m facing levels that are even more difficult than what I’ve shown here. Anyone who has played the Farewell DLC knows how much this game is able to challenge you (I think by the time I finish I’ll have added 1000 deaths to my counter, at least). But I’m sure of one thing: no level is impossible. As far as hard it may be, it’s just a question of time — or a question of tryin’. Step by step, death by death, I’m going to find out the secret timing. Celeste leaves you always a way to beat it. You have only to learn the dance.
