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  Celeste is a platformer released at the end of January 2018 by Matt Thorson and some of his friends. It's based on a short game, also called Celeste which Thorson made for a game jam using Pico-8. In terms of gameplay Celeste is a tough as nails but very encouraging game centered around a dash you can perform in any of eight directions to brave increasingly more challenging levels. Despite this single mechanic being the lifeblood of the game Celeste stays fresh all the way to the end and beyond. Celeste's narrative follows a girl named Madeline, who heads out to climb (an obviously fictionalized) Mount Celeste to run away from her problems but ultimately is forced to confront them. The story is surprisingly engaging for what kind of game this is and is a welcome change of pace from "Rescue the Princess/Animals/Whatever" or "Fight the bad guy/gal" The game offers an Assist mode to make the game easier for those who have trouble. It allows to slow the game down, increase number of dashes, give yourself infinite stamina and make you invincible in any combination desired. This in no way judges the player or limits their progress. Even achievements can be unlocked with Assist Mode active. To quote the game's description of the mode: "Celeste was designed to be a challenging, but accessible game. We believe that its difficulty is essential to the experience. We recommend playing without Assist Mode your first time. However, we understand that every player is different. If Celeste is inaccessible to you due to its difficulty, we hope that Assist Mode will allow you to still enjoy it."  We will be doing a full run through all of the levels. Collecting the Strawberries, Hearts and B-Sides. We'll also be completing all post game challenges with one exception that would not really benefit the LP (you will see what I mean once we get there). Even if we will be using advanced mechanics sooner than the game teaches them to us I would like you to not discuss them until I've properly explained them in the videos. The same, of course, goes for the game's story. I'll begin to explain things in more detail as soon as chapter 2. Like with all my LPs I would like to encourage you, should you feel like this game is just your jam while watching the LP, to go play it yourself before watching further. It took me less than one minute into videogamedunkey's review of the game to know that I wanna play it and I stopped watching just then.  All videos are uploaded to YouTube and collected in a playlist. Pressing the banner or play button will link you to the normal LP, the Fast Forward symbol will bring you to a speedrun of the level.                       --- Extras: Chapter 3 A GDC talk Matt Thorson held about Celeste a year before the game's release Chapter 7 So you like our dude Theo? His InstaPix is TheoUnderStars. Look him up! If you wanna see something real crazy watch a TAS! Here's Celeste in 25:41.747 In case you want to see the stawberry pie reactions for getting less than 170 strawberries some guy called Git Gud has made a video featuring them all Kotaku have released an interview with Matt Thorson in which he talks about what Celeste's story means to him and how it relates to his own experiences. Feeling the Soundtrack? Here's the Bandcamp page so you can listen to it anytime. The B-side OST can be found here and features more cool tunes. Post Game Interview with Lena Raine, Composer of Celeste. Here's a reddit AMA with the makers of the game. Some interesting stuff. Stats so far: If the stats don't match up it's because I did other stuff in each level not recorded for the LP. Like practicing hard jumps for the speedrun part of the videos and the likes.    
IGgy IGsen fucked around with this message at 21:53 on May 3, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 16:10
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I'm glad that everyone in here agrees that this game is good and people should play it. I understand that a lot of people are deterred by games like this, that are either difficult or even simply have a reputation to be so. I've seen people giving up after they died 20 times halfway through the first level because they felt discouraged, thought they did poorly. But then we have someone with approximately 200 deaths in this here thread and they apparently went on. I had about 70 deaths in the first level and didn't feel like it was too hard at any point because I didn't feel punishment for my "failure". I have over 5000 overall deaths on my main file where I've done everything and I don't regret a single one. But really, this just shows that in Celeste it matters less how good you are at it initially, but more that you're not afraid of failure. The game does its best to make it sting as little as possible but I still get that different people handle this kind of stuff differently. But there's this thing I always like to say about Dark Souls, but it applies to this here too, and many other games (and actually things in life in general). "The only way to lose is to give up".
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Mar 27, 2018 16:37
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All right. Due to multiple people requesting it I decided to add a speedrun for every A-Side chapter. They may not always be as fluid as that of chapter 1 but this should be fun regardless to see some of the levels that take people upwards to an hour on their first runs done in five somewhere between 2 and 10 minutes. I added a graphic with a fast-forward button to the op so people can jump straight to the speedruns of the respective chapters. I'll update the op proper to reflect that at some point too if I feel like it. I was gonna do a speedrun of the full game at the end anyway so I can consider this practice for when that happens. The video for Chapter 2 should probably be up somewhere over the weekend. IGgy IGsen fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Mar 29, 2018 |
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Mar 29, 2018 23:11
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It's chapter 2! And it has my favorite gimmick. Banner and play button start the video normally, the fast forward button skips straight to the speedrun portion of the video. If you're interested in the lead designer talking about the level design of the game I recommend checking out his GDC talk from last year, before the game had come out. It's really interesting and covers mostly the first two chapters plus a bit earlier, work-in-progress chapter 3. Funnily, Matt's talk tries to show multiple approaches to challenges in the exact same spot I did!
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Mar 31, 2018 12:34
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Lazy Bear posted:Someone else pointed this out in the Youtube comments too, but the squash and stretch to animations in the game is really expressive and brings a lot of life to the movement. I didn't point this out in the videos yet, but that stretch and squash is what happens if you press down on the D-Pad / Control Stick. It makes you fall faster and stretches you. It's basically something people do without really thinking about it because it's so intuitive and yet makes absolutely zero physical sense.
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Apr 2, 2018 02:33
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If you want to play Celeste Classic for the Pico 8 you can do so here. Since I've done a speedrun for every chapter so far let's compare some times, just to give you some perspective of what is possible. Times not mine are from speedrun.com. Chapter / World Record (2nd April 2018) / My Time from the LP / From my Full Game PB Forsaken City / 1:03 / 1:30 / 1:34 Old Site / 1:51 / 2:35 / 2:54 Celestial Resort / 5:11 / 7:41 / 8:51 Full Game / 32:24 / --:-- / 56:05 Obviously, we're far from having finished the full game for the LP, although I will be recording a separate full game run to close the LP out and hopefully show as much improvement as I have in my ILs so far.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:21
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Tenebrais posted:The mountain will show you things. Things you might not be ready to see.   But yeah, at this point it should be apparent that this is no ordinary mountain. Or at least it might not be accurate to the real life Mount Celeste. Surprise.
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Apr 4, 2018 00:55
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Not sure how many people watched it when I posted it alongside the chapter 2 video but in his GDC talk from before the game's release Matt Thorson said that he wanted the player to get fed up with Oshiro's crap as Madeline does the same. He's written to be pitiable, to annoy and upset you and eventually push you to the point where you want to tell him to screw himself The talk is mostly about level design rather than the narrative but it's interesting all around. In case you missed it https://youtu.be/4RlpMhBKNr0
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Apr 5, 2018 02:10
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Today's chapter 4 is quite a change of pace from the busy chapter 3. Time for some peace and quiet.
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Apr 6, 2018 17:44
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cant cook creole bream posted:Well, obviously you can't generalize panic attacks, since some stuff will just work better on some people than others. The feather actually does go a bit out of control if it leaves the breathing rectangle but the game doesn't really seem to punish you if that happens. It happened briefly in the video even. I know people who suffer from anxiety and have witnessed panic attacks in seemingly harmless situations that just happen to be severely stressful for them due to stuff such as phobias or bad memories and Madelines behavior seems spot on. Of course things like these can be completely different for other people and situations but that scene at the end struck pretty close due to knowing multiple people with similar issues.
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Apr 7, 2018 02:21
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Maybe we've ALL been dead all along.
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Apr 8, 2018 00:59
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Should I have a "copies sold" counter in the OP? I think it's 2 or 3 at this point. Not as legendary as the Super Mario 3D World LP selling moving consoles but still.
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Apr 9, 2018 18:12
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With Chapter 5 Celeste mixes it up yet again by making the level feel completely different from all the ones before it.
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Apr 9, 2018 23:30
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:
It's actually just the OST version reversed (mirrored, if you will) with no additional editing. The only thing I did was to make sure the music was loud enough so the whisper could be easily heard.
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Apr 10, 2018 02:54
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Dzhay posted:I just finished the this game['s story] and this LP is making me realise how bad I am at it. Explopyro posted:This LP is really excellent, I'm still enjoying it. Even if watching you do this does make me feel very inadequate as a player. quote:Out of curiosity, Iggy, do you mind telling us what you're playing this on and what kind of control setup you use? Fun fact: The very start of the LP, the part with the main menu right until the time the game starts, is actually from the PS4 version because on the PC I couldn't record the very start for technical reasons. I was originally gonna do the entire game on PS4 but then someone pointed out to me that the music is somehow a lower pitch on PS4.
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Apr 10, 2018 18:50
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An SSLP version of that big dialogue bit in the beginning may or may not be coming at some point. No promises. For the time being, though, this is very basic and contains some of the code/directions from the game files: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=150764 It's basically just for people who don't want to sit through the 20 or so minute intro sequence. The truth is I had a more full fledged post prepared but lost part of my progress (some gifs lost completely, resized screencaps. Basically busywork I'll have to do again.). Since this is a video LP anyway this will have to suffice for the time being. And oh yeah, you can just get the entire game script from the game files. It's kinda great. You can edit it too! 
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Apr 12, 2018 23:05
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So you like our dude Theo? His InstaPix is TheoUnderStars. Look him up! If you wanna see something real crazy watch a TAS! Here's Celeste in 25:41.747 In case you want to see the stawberry pie reactions for getting less than 170 strawberries some guy called Git Gud has made a video featuring them all Kotaku have released an interview with Matt Thorson in which he talks about what Celeste's story means to him and how it relates to his own experiences. Stats so far:  
IGgy IGsen fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Apr 17, 2018 |
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Apr 16, 2018 22:29
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cokerpilot posted:there is some skipping between 6:58 and 7:10 I know. There is no way I can fix that unfortunately. And I don't know what caused it. I actually considered playing through the entire game again just so I could collect red strawberries instead of the blue, already collected ones. But in the end I decided that that's not worth it and red strawberries are more important than some video skipping. These are my priorities.
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Apr 16, 2018 23:33
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In time for the end of the main Story Kotaku have released an interview in which Matt Thorson talks about what Celeste and its story means to him https://kotaku.com/celeste-taught-fans-and-its-own-creator-to-take-better-1825305692 It's a nice read.
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Apr 17, 2018 00:51
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Mraagvpeine posted:I forgot if you mentioned it, but what does the red skull mean? It counts deaths during B-Sides.
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Apr 18, 2018 09:34
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You might have noticed that this game as an awesome soundtrack. I almost feel bad for failing to link it. Well, here it is. Make sure to buy it if you're feeling these tunes. Or just listen to them on the page.
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Apr 20, 2018 20:52
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Yup, it's post game stuff. The thing is you're not really expected to get enough crystal hearts on your first playthrough to even enter it, if any. I didn't find a single one. I got in into The Core by playing the first four B-Sides and still felt it was really hard then when I first played it. I didn't even like it at the time. But it's since grown on me. It's a really fun level. You just need to get accustomed to the challenge it provides. I don't blame you for not really feeling the level. Because neither did I until I played the game more. I have 71 hours logged into steam at this point and I never thought I'd play a platformer for this long before Celeste. Just to give you some perspective on how long it took me. It was mostly casual play. The speedrun stuff I did makes up a fairly small part of that time.
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Apr 20, 2018 23:42
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Waltzing Along posted:Iggy, did you find everything via your own exploration, or did you use hints/spoilers? I found all the Strawberries and B-Sides myself. But I did need help with some of the Crystal Hearts. I didn't get the ones in 5A, 6A and 7A on my own. Knew how to get 7A, but didn't wanna spend too much time exploring and didn't make the connection between the colored gems and the birds in Chapter 1 for the 6A B-Side.
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Apr 21, 2018 00:33
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All right! Time for the B-Sides! Kid gloves are off, let's get to work.
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Apr 23, 2018 01:18
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Someone's just posted in the Games thread that Theo posted new pics to his
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Apr 25, 2018 02:48
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More B-Side. If you wanna hear about Celeste's Music from the composer Lena Raine herself check out this podcast. IGgy IGsen fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Apr 28, 2018 |
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Apr 27, 2018 13:32
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And with that we go through the last remaining B-Sides. But there's still something we need to do after this.
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Apr 29, 2018 16:58
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Well, and these are the C-Sides! And also the end of the LP. Well, almost... As promised at the start of the game here's a full-game speedrun of the game. If you want to see a video without me talking over it you can find it here. Current World Record is 31:51.140 by TGH If you care, here's a graph of the world record progression as of today. Source: spreedrun.com  And of course, here's also the final stats of the file I used for the LP The raw footage recorded for this LP was 12:15:44 hours long This includes footage from the first draft that had to be scrapped due to technical problems as well es the speedrun bits. All of the final videos are 7:50:34 hours combined And finally: Thanks for watching and participating. It's been fun! IGgy IGsen fucked around with this message at 10:56 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 1, 2018 14:11
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I just went through the thread to count. And if I didn't miss anything this LP sold the game to 5 people. I'm happy I got people to play the game. Thanks for all the kind words peepz. Before I send this thread in for archival on lparchive.org, is there anything else you want me to add to the op? Such as interesting posts from the thread or other stuff such as interviews and the likes that aren't already in the op?
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May 3, 2018 01:36
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