On playing Celeste during quarantine, putting pressure on yourself, and the anxiety from desiring accomplishment
An appreciation for Maddy Thorson's 2018 platformer.
When I had the opportunity for myself during the lockdown, I got myself a Nintendo Switch — and one of the first games that I got for it back then was Celeste. This game came from the recommendation of a friend of mine, after I decided that simply watching movies and doing nothing else but during the quarantine would only put me in a burnout. And truth be told, the feeling of extreme burnout has never done me favours with regards to my own anxiety — which just drew me into the narrative of Celeste all the more. By then, it started to click why I fell in love with Celeste to that extent which I did, even with that hesitance to complete the whole game still retaining within me.
For those unfamiliar with Celeste, it’s a platformer game developed by Maddy Thorson of Extremely OK Games. Released in 2018, this game managed to pick up a unique representation for its difficulty but also the way this ties into the game’s themes of overcoming one’s own anxiety when faced with something that seems impossible. But that’s only a small part of where I think this game’s appeal has been established, because on the surface the platforming is easy enough to get the hang of: you’re allowed a single dash while you jump so that you can reach areas that are barricaded by hordes of spikes, or for those who wanted an extra challenge, could make themselves collect the strawberries that they see all throughout the game. While it’s easy enough to find your way from the start of the chapter all the way to the end regardless of the amount of hurdles that will try to keep you from doing so, it never makes you feel obligated to complete everything all at once as long as you still achieve that sense of accomplishment from getting through what appear at first to be rather difficult challenges.
With that having been said, that’s one key aspect that makes Celeste work. It moves by via a very simple narrative, centering on its lead character Madeline as she makes her way to climb to the top of Celeste Mountain. On her way after trekking through deserted towns, she runs into Theo, a fellow hiker and aspiring photographer who acts as her line of support, but her bad self too, also known as “Badeline,” representing all of our worst tendencies catching up to us. And that’s also what makes each new challenge in Celeste a perfect allegory for overcoming our own anxieties, something that has only resonated all the more as we’ve been made to stay with one another in complete isolation as a result of the COVID-19 lockdowns. For in a sense, we’ve been made to encounter another mountain we’re aspiring to climb, but something about us on the inside is keeping us from reaching that — but maybe it may not be so exclusive to this period of isolation like we had thought too.
Before these lockdowns took place, we also had a goal set in mind which we sought out to achieve. With the lockdowns in place, for some of us, they almost seemed to be impossible given the circumstances within which we had been made to live under. And a huge part of how I feel that attributes itself to the experience of playing Celeste makes the game resonate even more through this period was the uncertainty that came along, in trying to find a means to escape what we see as our worst selves before they overtake us as a whole. Something that I’d found had only resonated with me all the more, because I always wanted to remain a writer as much as I could, yet it was never easy for me to find the words that I wanted to use immediately.
A key aspect to what makes the allegory of Celeste resonate comes from the fact that the mountain in itself becomes a way for Madeline to transform as a person as she continually climbs up higher. Of course, with creator Maddy Thorson having clarified in a recently published article about Madeline being transgender (Thorson has stated that they are non-binary and go by they/them pronouns), her own personal growth is one among many things that made her arc so compelling as she continued climbing. The mountain that we all saw to become one of her biggest hurdles would ultimately prove itself to be a sign of her own strength and resilience, especially as she’s pushing to climb as much as possible. She’s determined to climb so that she can leave her anxieties behind, even if they can’t fully be erased just from accomplishing such a feat, but there’s less of a reason for her to be afraid anymore.
It’s also this desire for the feeling of accomplishment that allows Celeste to stick with you, because of how much of the game can leave you wanting to feel that. From completing the game as fully as possible with the inclusion of its B-sides and every optional collectible, or with trying to accomplish the whole game as fast as possible, or simply just wanting to see the whole story play out, it’s easy enough to see why that would make the game a favourite amongst speedrunners. When you’re trying to rush from point A to point B as quickly and without deaths in a game like Celeste, you’ll always come out feeling some sort of fulfillment which speaks volumes as to why a game like this would be a huge favourite amongst many players today. But seeing what others are able to accomplish just raises up that anxiety all the more, and it’s in seeing how such achievements were pulled off that only feels like it’s the sort of motivation that we need while some of us are remaining in our homes, or have been for the past several months.
When you’re stuck at home under that impression that every day is going to feel absolutely repetitive, we feel that our anxieties become our biggest burdens — much like Madeline has over the course of Celeste. And many of you who have followed me for such a long time would remember there was a point in which I was able to write film reviews more consistently, but truthfully I only ever found myself getting burnt out even on something that I knew I loved most. I’ve still got something of a mountain to climb myself, but perhaps it’s only fitting that I envision myself as being within Madeline’s position while I’m stuck here. Because when we’re playing as Madeline, we’re made to endure that struggle of figuring out how to plan our next move whether it be to get a strawberry provided in game, or just to simply move forward to the next chapter of the game. It was easy enough to correlate this to what writing has been like for me over these past couple of months, because I was often stuck not knowing where to go from where I started. And as we know Madeline told herself, “you can do this.”
Even though I had already finished the main story of Celeste, it’s still a game I’m finding myself wanting to come back to and possibly experience it in full — because I had not yet managed to reach the 100% completion mark. Yet the most fulfilling aspect about having played Celeste comes from how we can see it as a spot for us to vent about our own anxieties as they’re already forming themselves into a figurative mountain for us to climb. We’ll get stuck every now and then, but that’s also where I find we’re trying to find a sense of flow that works for us — something that maybe we ought to figure out how to use within our daily lives. It’s what gets us from one stage to the next, bringing us to more difficult challenges along the way, but ultimately, that sense of fulfillment that we have ever so desired while we’re stuck within the same place.
Odds are this won’t be the only thing that I’ll ever write about Celeste, but given everything that it set out for, maybe it might have been something that I needed most right now. And surely, this isn’t the only time something of this sort was ever written about a game like this, but even then I always have bits of the wonderful soundtrack that Lena Raine has composed playing in my head as I’m finding out how to get through my own days. Because when we’re stuck not knowing where to go, it feels like we die again and again as we’d done a wrong move, but it’s there for us to reflect. And you know what, it just works. I tell myself I’ll hope to get back to what I do best, but maybe I don’t know that just yet.
