CELESTE
Credit: Matt Makes Games
With seemingly all of my friends on the opposite coast getting married this year, the Nintendo Switch has been a blessing. Every time I am crammed into some middle seat on whatever budget airline will have me, I can power up the Switch and push down whatever anxiety comes from over six hours of pinching my sciatic nerve.
So, imagine my surprise when, about 30,000 feet over Earth and all of its terrestrial concerns, I found myself so stressed out by Celeste, an adorable 2D pixel puzzle platformer, that I reflexively shut off the system without saving and stared at the black screen until I calmed down.
If there was a list of things I do not like in video games, I can guarantee it would start with the following three mechanics:
- Time trails
- Situations where I'm being "chased"
- Any sort of requirement to be 100% exact with the controls
Having heightened visceral reactions to fictional material is the reason I even started writing Gentle Gamers. If the word didn't make me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit, I'd more regularly label myself an empath, in that I absorb emotions in a room without discrimination. I'm easily affected by any whiff of stress in those around me, so I try to avoid media that knowingly manufactures that stress within me (e.g., horror movies, "cringe" comedy, stealth-based missions in video games).
At the point in Celeste when I turned it off without thinking, my player's character was having to run away from something, while navigating a complex puzzle that required utmost gamepad precision. My heart raced. My hands tensed to the point that I had to shake them out. I felt truly miserable. But after a few minutes staring at the black screen, I turned the game back on and resumed my attempt. Returning to it wasn't masochism, and it wasn't because I still had over three house left on my flight to the East Coast. It was because, from the start, Celeste was purposefully leaning into these stressful game mechanics to make a point about those feelings inside myself, and I was curious where it was leading me.
In that way, Celeste is not only an exquisitely constructed game, but one of the most empathetic I've ever played.