amphibious_ReViews

Celeste really surprised me. Having played the PICO-8 original first, I thought I knew what I was getting into, but there is so much more to this full-fledged release. Of course, the precision-platforming challenges were carried over, they've just undergone some impressive growth and are no longer the sole focus of the game. I'm not usually a fan of punishing difficulty in games, but Celeste never held back and I ate it up. The whole experience felt incredibly rewarding, both in terms of my personal growth as a player and in regards to Madeline's growth through the surprisingly emotional narrative. Madeline is the player character and the protagonist of Celeste. Seemingly in the hopes of achieving a sense of peace and clarity during a difficult time in her life, she sets her mind on climbing to the top of Mount Celeste. Along the way, she encounters a colorful collection of characters that inadvertently help her understand better the real reason that she's on this jour

It was only a few days after Christmas and I was exploring the capabilities of my new retro handheld. I had already experimented with the usual emulation and native-run games, so I started to dive deeper when something caught my eye. A few years previous, I had learned about PICO-8, a fantasy console that interested me, but that I had never gotten around to doing much with. Casually listed amongst the consoles my new handheld could emulate, PICO-8 sat ready to bid for my attention once again. This time, I couldn't resist the invitation, so I downloaded the only game for the "console" that I knew off the top of my head and I didn't put it down until I had beaten it. The original Celeste game is a short, yet challenging, precision platformer. Your goal is to scale a wintry mountain through thirty stages of increasingly complex platforming challenges, mastering your full array of movement capabilities along the way. You'll encounter walls to cling to, gaps to clear,