Game profile
Celeste
Climbing a mountain becomes a metaphor for the fight against your own anxiety and depression, wrapped in tight platforming gameplay. Despite its high difficulty, fair checkpoints keep it from ever feeling unfair.
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What kind of game this is
At its core this is Platformer, set in the present day. Visually it is built on pixel art, and the overall tone stays somewhere between light and heavy. The structure is guided rather than open, so you are moved along instead of dropped into a map. Sessions of an hour or two sit at the sweet spot here.
It is genuinely demanding, and repeated failure is part of how it is designed. The story matters and gives the mechanics a frame, without taking over. It is a single player experience from start to finish. It is available broadly, on 4 platforms. It sits in the budget bracket.
What stands out
- Precise controls
- Moving story
- Fair yet demanding design
This fits you if
- you want to live through a story, not just play a system
- you are after a proper adrenaline rush
- you want real resistance and are fine with dying a lot
- you play alone and want a complete experience without other people
- you are watching your budget
- you like a deliberate retro look over photorealism
Look elsewhere if
- you want to relax and not be punished for mistakes
- pixel art puts you off
- you want to play it side by side with someone
How long is Celeste?
About 12 hours in total. At three evenings a week and two hours each, you will be busy for roughly 2 weeks, or 6 sessions.
How the rating ranks
Critics settled on 91 out of 100, which puts it above 91 percent of the 1276 games here and at rank 93 overall. That is a strong score, comfortably above what most releases manage.
For comparison, Platformer averages 83 points across the database, so this one sits 8 points above its own genre. The figure rests on 1488 collected ratings.
Released in 2018, so it has 8 years behind it. Usually cheap by now and the rough edges are long fixed.
The facts
- Release year
- 2018
- Genres
- Platformer
- Playtime
- approx. 12 hrs.
- Difficulty
- Demanding, punishing
- Story weight
- Present and relevant
- Play with
- Solo
- Setting
- Present day
- Visual style
- Pixel art
- Price bracket
- Budget
- Platforms
- PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
- Critic rating
- 91 / 100
Direct comparison
| Genres | Release year | Playtime | Critic rating | Price bracket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Celeste | 2018 | approx. 12 hrs. | 91 | Budget |
| Katana Zero | 2019 | approx. 6 hrs. | 85 | Budget |
| Duskfade | 2026 | approx. 18 hrs. | n/a | Mid price |
| The Messenger | 2018 | approx. 12 hrs. | 87 | Mid price |
If you liked this, try these
- 85/100 Katana Zero Shared: Platformer, Present day, shorter
- n/a Duskfade Shared: Platformer, longer
- 87/100 The Messenger Shared: Platformer
- 75/100 God of War Sons of Sparta Shared: Platformer, shorter
- 79/100 Mio: Memories in Orbit Shared: Platformer, longer
- 91/100 Split Fiction Shared: Platformer