Celeste

Celeste arrived in 2018 and immediately made a strong case for being one of the finest platformers ever made. In 2025 that case is only stronger.

Madeline's climb up Celeste Mountain is a precision platformer of extraordinary craft. Each chapter introduces new mechanics — the dash crystal, the moving platforms, the dream blocks — and then constructs entire worlds of challenges around them with near-perfect escalation. The difficulty curve is ruthless but never unfair. Every death is a lesson. Every lesson builds toward a moment of pure flow that makes your fingers feel like they belong to someone much better at games than you.

But Celeste would be a great game even without the story. With it, it becomes something else entirely. The narrative threads Madeline's external climb with an internal reckoning about anxiety, self-doubt, and self-compassion with a lightness and sincerity that most narrative games can only dream of. Part of Me as a mechanic and as a metaphor is one of the most elegant design decisions in games.

Lena Raine's soundtrack is a separate masterwork. From the gentle opening themes to the thunderous boss music to the crystalline wonder of Reflection — it is one of the great game soundtracks and I listen to it outside of games regularly.

The B-Sides and the secret Chapter 9 add dozens of hours of extreme challenge for those who want them. This is a game that gives players exactly as much as they choose to take from it.