In 2018, with Game of the Year nominations filled with big-budget experiences helmed by hundreds or even thousands at people at studios with long track records of making quality experiences, Celeste was a refreshing and deserving underdog candidate. Released early in the year, Celeste immediately made a significant splash in the indie gaming scene with its challenging gameplay combined with a narrative concerned mental health and coming to peace with one’s doubts and self-loathing that resonated with thousands of players.

Deservedly so, journalists, content creators, and general fans of the game around the globe have discussed the meaningfulness and relevance of Celeste’s narrative as it relates to the all-too life consuming vortexes of anxiety and depression. However, the way in which Celeste expresses its narrative ideas go beyond mere dialogue between characters. While there certainly are instances where mental illness and health are openly talked about between Madeline and Theo, what elevates Celeste’s narrative is not in how its subject matter is talked about but how that subject matter is incorporated into all aspects of the game. Above anything, Celeste very well may be one of the best examples of the tried-and-true writing rule of “show, don’t tell” in any piece of modern media. Let’s dive into why.

The easier, creatively safer way for Celeste to communicate its narrative across to players would have been to have its gameplay and story themes be separate from each other. After all, many games do this. For instance, in Final Fantasy X, you’re not thinking about the story’s themes of death, sacrifice, and the abuses of power from institutions that maintain a dominant presence over the public when you’re battling monsters to acquire AP and further progress on the game’s Sphere Grid. The gameplay does not necessarily assist in elevating awareness to what the game’s story is trying to communicate to the player. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that - gameplay systems don’t necessarily have to enhance a game’s storytelling to create a fun, engaging, and insightful experience. At the end of the day, games are ultimately concerned with creating fun experiences to be enjoyed by players, and having every gameplay moment feel like it contributes to a game’s narrative isn’t always feasible or necessary for a game to achieve becoming that enjoyable experience.

That said, it is when games manage to intertwine their gameplay and narrative into one entity that something truly special is created. As an incredibly difficult platformer, Celeste puts its player in the same shoes as Madeline, and the first similarity that creates a mirror between Madeline and the player begins before the game is even played. Madeline’s reason for choosing to climb the frozen peaks of Mt. Celeste is to simply get away from the stresses of her everyday life. She wants to climb this mountain in order to have something to do without having her mind wandering into dark places.

To this, many players of the game, myself included, are already in a similar mindset as Madeline. As an adult with a decreasing amount of available free time, I continue to set hours aside out of my weekly schedule for video games because of the escapism that they provide. Diving into the worlds that works of fiction help keep my mind open, focused, and at ease from the real world stresses that I have. Playing video games me with a realization that, maybe that just for a moment, I can be allowed to enjoy myself - that I can spend a few hours working towards a goal or set of smaller goals and overcome challenges along the way, much like how Madeline views climbing the mountain throughout the game.

Celeste’s difficulty, though, is the true star of the show when it comes to how it manages its narrative through gameplay. As my adventure began and after a clearing a brief Prologue that describes the game’s basic controls, my trek through Chapter 1 (not having grabbed the Crystal Heart, B-Side Tape, nor all of the collectible Strawberries) finished in just under an hour with approximately 80 deaths. As I continued to play through the game’s future chapters, the difficulty scaled up accordingly, but so too did my ability to manage the game’s challenges. Each chapter does a phenomenal job at introducing unique gimmicks throughout each level and expanding upon each idea before moving on to the next idea, all eventually coalescing into Chapter 7, a level that combines all of the previous levels’ gimmicks into one final trial, testing everything you’ve learned throughout the game.

However, it was when reaching Chapter 8 that I fully realized the amount of learning and development I had encountered throughout the game. In order to access the game’s eighth chapter, “Core”, you must collect the Crystal Hearts located in each of the game’s primary levels. Alongside these Crystal Hearts are another collectable: B-Side Tapes, which unlock more difficult versions of each main level. Clearing these also unlocks a C-Side level, an even more difficult, albeit shorter variation on that chapter.

As my quest to collect the Crystal Hearts began, I decided to go back to Chapter 1. I ran through the stage looking for Strawberries, the Crystal Heart, and the B-Side Tape. After finding the Heart, the B-Side Tape, and as many of the Strawberries that I was able to grab along the way, I reached the “Chapter Complete” screen for Chapter 1 for the second time. What was originally a level that I died over 80 times on had now become a level where I died less than 10 times. What exactly happened here?

On the surface, myself improving at an early level feels like rudimentary result of me becoming more accustomed to the game’s mechanics. And while that’s most definitely the case, clearing the level more successfully inherently made me reflect on the game’s themes of growth, improvement, and acceptance. Throughout the game’s first seven chapters, I had died hundreds of times, with each serving as a lesson as to how to best utilize each level’s gimmick(s) to my advantage and overcome each challenge it put in my path. After having taking each of those lessons and coming back to the chapter where I began that journey, it suddenly became easier.

The reason for this being a satisfying experience is twofold. The first reason for the satisfying second, more successful run of the game’s first level is the gameplay perspective of it. The fact that Celeste’s tight and intelligently crafted level design demands so much skill out of the player means that you are responsible for your improvement. As you apply the knowledge and experience you’ve gained throughout your adventure to breeze past earlier, comparatively less challenging obstacles, you feel that you’ve grown and conquered the game. The other reason for this sensation being satisfying is that you don’t feel that you’ve conquered the game alone.

As you’ve grown as a player, so too has Madeline grown as a character. Once you’ve completed the game’s story, you feel a connection with Madeline on her journey. Whether you struggle with your mental health in any capacity or not, you’re able to relate with Madeline’s conflict, journey, and resolution in Celeste because of how much you’ve adjusted to the challenges present by the game’s level design. Just as Madeline came out victorious in coming to terms with the “other part of herself”, so have you reigned victorious in overcoming gameplay that may have once overwhelmed you.

The best illustration of the inseparable connection between Celeste’s gameplay and its narrative lies in the game’s B-side and C-side levels. These levels may not have any direct story content within them, but they decisively have the best examples of how challenges that appear overwhelming and seemingly impossible to get past are, in fact, possible to overcome given enough determination, self-awareness, and patience.

Every B-Side and C-Side level had sections within it (see above image from Chapter 3’s C-Side) that daunted me. “I can’t do this”, “Maybe I should just give up…”, and “This is too much? How can I get past this?” were the kinds of thoughts I had at every one of these seemingly impossible sections. These provided instances where I would die hundreds of times (no exaggeration), resulting in a sense of hopelessness. And yet, due to the game’s level design never feeling unfair and always seeming possible to overcome, I stuck with each difficult segment. I endured through the hundreds of deaths, learning from each mistake, until at last, I’d survive and make it through, raising my fists and whispering “Yes” through my teeth as I feel a giant weight and stress release from my shoulders. Against the odds, I persisted, and through that persistence, I was able to triumph.

This feeling, this release of stress and its result in making me feel like I could overcome any challenge if I gave it enough persistence - this was when I knew that Celeste’s management of its difficulty and narrative was something that needs to be talked about. When I finally got through each B-Side and C-Side in the game, everything suddenly clicked. Even though some levels ended up taking hours for me to complete due to how many times I would die, I kept coming back because of a firm belief that nothing the game presented to me was truly impossible to pass through.

Throughout the game’s story, Madeline is pestered by her “other” self, telling Madeline that she’s incapable of climbing the mountain, that she’s just a burden to the people she meets. And while it isn’t easy for Madeline to ignore and endure the negative thoughts brought about by her “other” self, the support of those she meets on the mountain gives her the courage to press on. She eventually accepts that her “other self” is a part of her and always will be, and upon accepting that, Madeline joins with her “other” self, as they begin climbing Mt. Celeste together. Upon working with each other (as symbolized through the addition of a second dash in Chapter 7), Madeline climbs the mountain against all odds.

Mirroring the conflict I saw unfold in the game’s story, the immensely challenging B-Sides and C-Sides felt like they had awakened my “other” self, making me question if I had what it took to complete each level. This “other” self gave me self-doubts, made me unsure if I was capable of getting through the game. But just like Madeline, while the challenges of the task at hand seemed overwhelming and the thoughts within me telling me to turn back and give up, I kept going, and eventually competed the challenges faced against me.

Celeste’s narrative is impeccably crafted in that it causes the player to go on the same journey as its protagonist. While, yes, we always go on journeys with protagonists as we partake in any story, very rarely do stories directly put us in the same shoes as the protagonist. Celeste has its players watch Madeline’s struggles with her “other” self and her self-imposed challenge of climbing Mt. Celeste, and players experience that journey and watch as Madeline grows as a character. But then, through the inclusion of the game’s collectables and additional levels, players get to experience Madeline’s struggles firsthand in a manner that I haven’t seen replicated in any other piece of media. Rather than reading about Madeline’s conflict and watching her overcome it, we get to experience Madeline’s perspective firsthand as we overcome incredibly challenging levels that mirror the central conflict of the game.

Just as some of Celeste’s most challenging levels, the struggles of mental illness can feel like a seemingly impassible blockade. Your thoughts are telling you to give up fighting against this blockade and accept that it truly is impossible to bypass. And yet, you see this character overcome this blockade through it and think “well, maybe this is possible”. And then, Celeste throws its B-Side and C-Side levels at you and makes you become the one that must overcome the challenges. You take the lessons Madeline learned and the growth she experienced as inspiration for powering through the difficult levels, and you eventually get through them. And suddenly, Celeste’s narrative, through the inclusion of its unshakable difficulty, has taught you how to overcome challenges. The realities of mental illness and other struggles that we face in our day-to-day lives may seem impassable, but if we continue to be patient and work at them, just as we would for a challenging B-Side or C-Side level, we’ll end up triumphing - we’ll end up as stronger and smarter people through patience and determination.

Celeste’s narrative becomes understandable to any player of the game, regardless if they are impacted by the game’s subject matter of mental illness or not. Everyone who plays Celeste will learn about how to learn and and get through hardship, which, in so doing, teaches its audience about mental health and illness, a topic that many pieces of media struggle to effectively talk about, and how it can be coped with. It is for teaching that lesson to its players that Celeste’s management of its difficulty and narrative serves can only be considered as masterful.

Thank you so much for reading! What are your thoughts on Celeste and its management of difficulty and narrative? Do you think it elevates how the game discusses mental health? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter @DerekExMachina.