Still Pixels

I’ve always said pixel art is the best way to make a video game. Maybe that’s just nostalgia talking—I grew up on Super Nintendo, after all—but I’ve played through Witcher 3, Skyrim, Final Fantasy XV, games that probably cost more to make than my car is worth, and I still get that specific thrill from a well-crafted pixel platformer that the big 3D stuff doesn’t quite touch. There’s something about constraints that makes you sharper.

Celeste hit me exactly right. It’s about this woman Madeline who decides to climb a mountain that’s essentially a series of escalating horrors, meeting the kind of weird people who show up in those places—an old woman who’s sweeter than she should be, a hotel owner running some kind of scheme, people who seem to think danger is a drug. The game just came out on everything.

The gameplay is familiar territory: Super Meat Boy spliced with those old SNES platformers that seemed designed to destroy you but somehow made you come back for more. Celeste has that same quality. It throws different challenges at you, the people you meet feel real, and the difficulty climbs in a way that feels honest rather than cheap. It’s not for people with short tempers or shaky patience, but if that’s not you, it respects that. When I finally cleared some of those later levels, I felt like I’d actually learned something, beaten something fair, rather than just gotten lucky. That’s always what I come back for.