Expansion of Play and Mental Health Narratives in Celeste

By Elle and Logan

Introduction (Elle):

Celeste offers a unique gameplay experience in relation to other platformer games, providing features such as Invincibility Mode, which makes gameplay possible even for me as a person with limited video gaming experience. In this blog post, we write about Celeste’s expansion of play possibilities and incorporation of mental health narratives.

Modes of Play (Logan):

Despite being a tough as nails platformer with unrelenting obstacles that threaten you at every turn, Celeste stands out as a game that embraces players of all skill levels. The fundamental controls of the game come down to a joystick or directional pad for movement through the space, a jump, a grab, and a dash. Many modern platformers tend to overwhelm new players with mechanics and abilities that require precision and a deep level of game knowledge to get a grasp on. Celeste is content to keep the controls simple and let the game mechanics speak for themselves. The game launched with seven levels and two more were added later on, and each one has a unique mechanic that alters the standard gameplay in some form. None of these significantly change the players’ moveset or require additional buttons, they just recontextualize and build upon what has already been established. The approach that the Celeste developers took to making a platformer creates a fascinating dichotomy. They have created a brutally challenging game that is effectively impossible to truly complete, that is also very approachable and understandable to players of all levels of ability. It’s easy to understand, but difficult to master. This is especially evident in Celeste’s prominent speed running community in which pixel-perfect movement and hundreds of frame-perfect inputs are required to get a top-level time. The fundamental gameplay and mechanics of Celeste were crafted in a way that the game can be enjoyed by anyone.

As if that wasn’t enough, Celeste offers a glut of assist options right off the bat through its extensive “assist mode.” There are five options within this umbrella, some of which have multiple options within them, and some of which can be simply toggled on or off: game speed, infinite stamina, air dashes, dash assist and invincibility. Game speed is fairly self-explanatory. You can slow down everything in the game to 50% speed by intervals of 10%. This allows the player to adjust the level of timing and precision necessary on some of the obstacles. Infinite stamina allows the player to cling to walls for as long as they want, which creates far more safe spots to rest and take a breath between difficult obstacles. Normally, the player gets to use their dash one time before they touch the ground again or refill their stamina some other way. The “air dashes” option lets the player dash twice in midair or an infinite amount of times if they so choose. Dash assist stops the game any time the player dashes and allows them to select an arrow that’s pointing the direction they want to go. This is especially useful for getting used to the ability and its cardinal limitations. Lastly, toggling invincibility allows the player to touch obstacles and keep going. What’s fantastic about the assist mode in Celeste is the variety of options that appeal to different potential needs of the player base. Some of them, such as game speed, invincibility, and air dashes, simply make the game easier. For people who aren’t as experienced in platforming or simply don’t have the privilege of sinking hours of effort into every play session, this lets them set their own level of challenge. Others, such as dash assist and infinite stamina, give players of differing abilities options to enjoy a game that otherwise may present barriers that the developers hadn’t considered. Putting accessibility in the hands of the players allows for individuals to choose what works best for them and prevents the developers from having to attempt a “one size fits all” approach that will inevitably leave people behind. All of this is already great, but Celeste takes things a step further. Contemporary platformers often employ similar, albeit less robust, assist modes. If you die too many times, the game asks you if you’d like to skip the level or gives you a power-up that makes you invincible, etc. However, these games usually punish you for taking advantage of these options. In many games I’ve played, using the options that the game provides can permanently lock you out of true completion, even if you go back and beat the level “legitimately.” I understand the desire to preserve rewards for “pure” completion of one’s game, but offering disadvantaged players a way to beat your game only to punish them for taking it is just scummy, not to mention bad game design. Celeste allows the player to use any accessibility options they want and still considers a win legitimate. You can even skip through every single level and watch the final cutscene, and the game doesn’t punish you or hold it against you in any way. Does this diminish the value of what a “win” truly means? Maybe. But ultimately, players who want to truly challenge themselves still have the ability to do so, and players who otherwise wouldn’t be able to now can as well. If anything, that makes the idea of “winning” even more valuable. A win in Celeste is not on the level designer’s terms, it’s on the players’ terms. I believe that’s an incredibly powerful subversion.

Mental Health Narratives (Elle):

I’m feeling Sam Quirke’s writing about his experience playing Celeste as highlighting a kind of space in which players can be responsive to what the game offers them in relation to mental health while feeding those strategies back into the context of the game. Quirke writes that “If I find myself hurling at a difficult section relentlessly, I remember the feather [breathing strategy offered by the game] and stop to take a breath.” I would argue that this represents a kind of accessibility, although it does not figure as one of the official Assist Mode features discussed above by Logan.

Players can not only use the feather breathing strategy within the boundaries of the game and the gameplay, but also—in a fantasmic way—allow that tactic for navigating anxiety and panic to transcend the edges of the space, potentially breaking the magic circle (Chess 74-75) and letting a gameplay feature—keeping the feather inside the box on the screen—move beyond its boundaries to affect a player’s real, physical, life.

Conclusion (Logan):

Celeste doesn’t treat accessibility as an inconvenient checkbox to tick off during the development process, or a blurb on the back of the box. Accessibility is a gameplay mechanic that is inherent to the game’s design and the player’s experience. It is up to you to create and beat the obstacles set up for you. All the developers do is provide you with the means and tools to do so. It’s one thing to create a game that everyone wants to play. But the developers of Celeste went a step further and made a game that anyone can play.

Bibliography:

Chess, Shira. “Play to Protest.” In Play Like a Feminist, 74-75. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2020.

Quirke, Sam. “The Mountains We Make: Celeste and Mental Health.” TrueAchievements, 24 Feb 2018. https://www.trueachievements.com/n31419/the-mountains-we-make-celeste-and-mental-health

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