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[Cuzz]

is amazing. Discuss.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I like the part where you are jumping around.

[Kuildeous]

I looked it up on Wikipedia. Looks promising.

I wonder if it runs fine on my computer. My Alienware died, so I'm using a lesser computer right now.

[LastFootnote]

I beat it. I may try to get all the strawberries.

I did the first B-Side. Man, I don't think I'm going to get through the rest of those.

But yes, I highly recommend the game. I feel like I got my money's worth just playing through the main plot, and then there's a bunch more content if I want to go back to it.

[sitnaltax]

I'm enjoying it a lot. I love the short levels. It never feels cruel or unfair, even when it's being difficult.

I also appreciate the way they slowly introduce new challenges. They don't make you feel bad for missing the difficult strawberries and not jumping into the B-sides.

I got all the strawberries and I'm currently 5/8 B-sides, working on Chapter 6. I don't anticipate going for the golden strawberries or C-sides--but then again, I didn't anticipate going for the B-sides either and yet here I am.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I got all the strawberries and I'm currently 5/8 B-sides, working on Chapter 6. I don't anticipate going for the golden strawberries or C-sides--but then again, I didn't anticipate going for the B-sides either and yet here I am.

If you finish the B-sides I think you will definitely want to do the C-sides, the difficulty ramp from B to C is not that severe. The C-sides are very short and there's essentially just one super long super hard screen. I really enjoyed them, anyway.

Besides the first couple normal levels, I think the golden strawberries are an entirely different (and to me, not appealing) beast. There is a part of me that wants to grind out a few more, though.

[blueblimp]

Celeste is excellent. I didn't try it right away because it's been compared to Super Meat Boy and I didn't really like that, but turns out I like Celeste anyway. Not sure what's the difference. (Maybe it's mostly that I don't like the SMB aesthetic.)

I've done everything now except 8B (which I did on 50% speed using assist mode) and 3C. Also, not the golden strawberries of course. It's probably my favorite 2D platformer of all time, but I usually don't like 2D platformers so that doesn't mean much. If anyone wants to try only one challenging platformer, this is the one to try.

Another game I've enjoyed recently is the VR game To The Top, which is basically the same genre as Celeste except as a VR game. One thing To The Top does that I wish Celeste did too is to have par times for each chapter. (TTT actually has three times of increasing difficulty.) Also, TTT's stages are more similar in length to Celeste's subchapters. Overall it makes for a more compelling casual speedrunning game. Celeste seems to be a great speedrun game but more for the hardcore crowd.

[blueblimp]

By the way, this GDC talk by the game's lead dev is a really interesting watch: One of Celeste's many strong points is the excellent level design, and the talk gives a behind the scenes look at how they did it.

[Cuzz]

By the way, this GDC talk by the game's lead dev is a really interesting watch: One of Celeste's many strong points is the excellent level design, and the talk gives a behind the scenes look at how they did it.

Nice, I'll have to check this out. I really enjoyed the Game Maker's Toolkit video about its Assist Mode specifically, which is how I learned about the game in the first place.

Made it to the end and heading back for B-sides now. I suck so I'm already at over 20 hours and 6k deaths, but as someone who plays like 3 games a year at the most I'm really impressed with just how much it's sucked me in.

[popsofctown]

price?

[LastFootnote]

price?

$20

[Titandrake]

Celeste is excellent. I didn't try it right away because it's been compared to Super Meat Boy and I didn't really like that, but turns out I like Celeste anyway. Not sure what's the difference. (Maybe it's mostly that I don't like the SMB aesthetic.)

I haven't played Celeste yet, but the distinction I've heard is that Super Meat Boy is a precision platformer and Celeste is a momentum platformer. Precision platformers are about hitting very small jump windows, but your movement is very consistent and it depends very little on how you reach the jump point. Momentum platformers give you larger timing windows, but in exchange your movement state matters a lot more, and the game is more about maintaining speed and understanding the movement system.

Dustforce is a momentum platformer and so far everyone in the Dustforce Discord recommends Celeste.

[blueblimp]

Hm, that's interesting. For an ordinary playthrough (not speedrunning), I don't feel like Celeste puts much emphasis on maintaining speed. Almost the opposite, since you can stop really quickly on solid ground or by grabbing a wall. (Speedrunning is a different story because it uses techniques that you wouldn't use playing through normally.)

That said, the usual way to solve levels is to repeatedly figure out the sequence of moves you want to make to get to the next rest point, then make them in succession. Each move has some slack on it, but you do need to find a reasonable sequence. So if that's what "momentum platformer" means, that sounds accurate.

[Cuzz]

I think the grip strength element involves  “maintaining speed” to some degree though maybe that’s not what they mean.

I did think it was cool in the video above where the creator talks about the “multiple approaches” and making hard levels that aren’t reduced to just a sequence of precise inputs. There’s always a cushion even if it is very small.

[Cuzz]

The speed runs of this game are crazy. The fact that there are these ways of moving through levels that you wouldn’t find or use in an ordinary play through, but that they are somehow there by design and not a glitch is really interesting. They basically all look like a TAS run.

[Awaclus]

I tried it for a while, didn't really like it. I think it feels more like a rhythm game in that the gameplay is largely about pressing a specified key at a specified moment, and obviously because I'm a drummer, I always hit the keys too fast.

[blueblimp]

I did think it was cool in the video above where the creator talks about the “multiple approaches” and making hard levels that aren’t reduced to just a sequence of precise inputs. There’s always a cushion even if it is very small.

Yeah. Actually, considering that there isn't much precision demanded and you're given lots of rest points, it's a bit subtle why the game is hard at all. I think the key is that most generically-reasonable inputs will cause you to die (or otherwise fail to complete the room). That means very few of the rooms can be completed by accident, so you're forced to understand the room so that you can find specific inputs that work for that room. That gives it a slight puzzle-y feel to me, even though it really isn't a puzzle game.

[markusin]

I watched the "Best Friends Play Celeste" video on Youtube that I stumbled upon by chance and checked out because of this thread. It was entertaining to watch, and the fluidity in the movement seemed appealing.

[popsofctown]

I also didn't like Super Meat Boy yet like some games that are very similar to it.  There's this one on kongregate I played that's super similar, and I loved the game boy Donkey Kong puzzle platformer, and I've played all sorts of high difficulty platformers and dug them.  Spelunky comes to mind.

There's not always time for all the things I want to do but I might wanna check this out. 

I saw a crazy platformer during the last summer games done quick or whatever, it had 4 characters and all of them were like, chimney sweeps? it was pretty interesting to watch.  Sometimes I feel like maybe they are funner to think about or watch then play..

[pacovf]

I also didn't like Super Meat Boy yet like some games that are very similar to it.  There's this one on kongregate I played that's super similar, and I loved the game boy Donkey Kong puzzle platformer, and I've played all sorts of high difficulty platformers and dug them.  Spelunky comes to mind.

I'd say Spelunky is different. It's less hard than it feels, it's just super high stakes, because if you die, you've got to start completely over. If you had no items and only one hitpoint, but there was a checkpoint after every level, it would be a lot easier.

EDIT: or maybe I just need to git gud

I saw a crazy platformer during the last summer games done quick or whatever, it had 4 characters and all of them were like, chimney sweeps? it was pretty interesting to watch.  Sometimes I feel like maybe they are funner to think about or watch then play..

Dustforce?

[sitnaltax]

I got all the strawberries and I'm currently 5/8 B-sides, working on Chapter 6. I don't anticipate going for the golden strawberries or C-sides--but then again, I didn't anticipate going for the B-sides either and yet here I am.

If you finish the B-sides I think you will definitely want to do the C-sides, the difficulty ramp from B to C is not that severe. The C-sides are very short and there's essentially just one super long super hard screen. I really enjoyed them, anyway.

Besides the first couple normal levels, I think the golden strawberries are an entirely different (and to me, not appealing) beast. There is a part of me that wants to grind out a few more, though.

Thanks for the encouragement. I finally finished 8-B and indeed the C-sides seem pretty fair so far--I'm on 4-C right now. They're not as bad as I imagined--some intense maneuvers with no breaks, but the individual pieces are ok. For example, in 3-C (the level where the hotel ghost charges at you) I dreaded having to jump, dash, stomp the ghost to gain altitude/refresh, and dash again. The level doesn't require you to do that, though, which was nice.

[blueblimp]

Thanks for the encouragement. I finally finished 8-B and indeed the C-sides seem pretty fair so far--I'm on 4-C right now. They're not as bad as I imagined--some intense maneuvers with no breaks, but the individual pieces are ok. For example, in 3-C (the level where the hotel ghost charges at you) I dreaded having to jump, dash, stomp the ghost to gain altitude/refresh, and dash again. The level doesn't require you to do that, though, which was nice.

For me, 3C was by far the hardest, because I find the Oshiro bop timing really hard. (Well, maybe not the highest deaths since it's not very long, but bopping Oshiro was the single hardest move for me.) The ones most people think are hardest are 5C, 7C, 8C. They're all fair though.

[blueblimp]

I'd say Spelunky is different. It's less hard than it feels, it's just super high stakes, because if you die, you've got to start completely over. If you had no items and only one hitpoint, but there was a checkpoint after every level, it would be a lot easier.

That's the tricky thing about the term "hard". There are a lot of different ways for a game to be hard. I wish there were better terms that more precisely described what makes the game hard, because some forms of hardness I like, and some I don't.

For games with hand-crafted levels, I like Celeste's model a lot (which dates back at least as far as Matt Thorson's early work Jumper (2004)): frequent checkpoints and instant respawn. Maybe it's that I like low stakes games that nevertheless require you to actually spend mental effort to play them.

[sitnaltax]

For me, 3C was by far the hardest, because I find the Oshiro bop timing really hard. (Well, maybe not the highest deaths since it's not very long, but bopping Oshiro was the single hardest move for me.) The ones most people think are hardest are 5C, 7C, 8C. They're all fair though.

Man, you weren't lying about 5-C. That one took me 658 deaths and I was pretty close to just putting the game down. (The turning point came when I realized you don't have to move laterally at all to do the wall kick move, which let me do it much more consistently.) 6-C, by contrast, was 137 and probably less than an hour.

Last stops are 7-C and 8-C, of course, and the videos for both of them look absolutely insane.

[blueblimp]

Yeah, 5C requires mastery of the super wall jump. One issue with teaching advanced tech so late in the game (in 7B and 8C) is that they aren't repeated much in less demanding situations, making them hard to learn fully. IMO it would have been better to not bother teaching dash long jump at all, since 8C doesn't use it an interesting way anyway. For the dash wall jump, maybe require it for all B-sides instead so that the player gets more practice with it. (There is the problem though that people might play the B-sides out of order.)