Alright. Like I said, we're getting heavy and we're getting real today and tomorrow. I can honestly say that both of these are life changing experiences. I was back and forth which one of these 2 was gonna be #1, and it came down to just remaking my topster and figuring out where these 2 games specifically fit into my all time favorites. This one just landed a bit lower.
Let's talk about Celeste.
Celeste is such a simple premise... at first. You play as Madeline, and you climb a mountain. That's it. Of course, the mountain climb is pretty fuckin hard, but that makes sense both thematically and practically: Climbing a mountain ain't easy lol. And this is where it stops being simple to discuss.
Celeste is a masterclass in tackling mental health/illness, primarily anxiety and depression. You see, the whole reason Madeline is climbing the mountain in the first place is because she hopes that, by tackling this monumental task, she'll learn things about herself and hopefully find a reason to live. To keep going. Climbing this mountain, this daunting task, is all she has left right now, and hopefully that will change. Of course, she's not going it alone. Early on she makes a friend who is also working his way up the mountain: Theo. Finding him along the way always gives a moment of respite, a moment to relax and decompress.
That's not the only person you meet, of course. There's also "Part Of You" which I'm going to just refer to by her more common name, Badeline. Badeline represents all of Madeline's self doubts, her self hatred, her self destructive tendencies. She shows up to impede your progress pretty often, at a few points even sending Madeline into a panic attack. For the first one of these, Theo is there to help calm Madeline down with a breathing exercise. And, I gotta say, actively needing to CONTROL the breathing exercise yourself is an intensely powerful moment. Eventually, though, Madeline learns to stop running from all her demons. All her awful tendencies. She learns to accept Badeline into herself, knowing they're one and the same and she has to take control if she's going to survive. And after this, there's nothing left standing in your way except reaching the summit.
This game broke me down in a lot of ways, but it built me back up just the same. It tested how hard I was willing to push myself, how patient I could be, how many times I was willing to get back up after being knocked down. I am not joking when I say this game is hard as fuck. And I admit, I am not the most patient person all the time, or the most willing to keep going in the face of imminent failure. But when you get it right here, when you succeed, when you make it past certain tricky screens that are giving you so much trouble, it' feels better than pretty much anything. You WILL die. A LOT. You will likely get frustrated. But you have to keep pushing on. This game breaks you down until you're ready to give in, and then builds your confidence back up in the best possible ways.
There's a lot to take away from this game. First, as someone who deals with panic attacks irl, I've actually found the feather method from this game to be quite effective at combating them. The bigger takeaway is twofold though. You can't run from your demons forever, and nobody can climb their mountain alone. You have to take the bad with the good, trying to hide/shut out the bad will only make things worse. And everyone has their own mountain to climb in life, their own obstacles, but nobody's truly climbing alone. We all have people there to help us make our ascent into whatever comes next.
If you struggle with your own mental health, or you just wanna play a really fuckin hard platformer with a ton of heart: Play. This. Game.
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