2018's best platformer now has an adorable Mario 64-style tribute made by the game's original dev team for its 6th anniversary—and it's completely free

An image of a nintendo-64 styled Madeline, a young adventurous woman in a coat, celebrating her recent find of a strawberry in Celeste 64.

(Image credit: Maddy Makes Games)

Celeste is one of the best platformers in the past decade—it's a game with a heartfelt, deeply affecting narrative that's also just really damn good at what it does: Complex 2D platforming with a skill ceiling so high it's nudging the moon. Now you can play it in 3D, kinda.

Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain is a short romp through a 3D version of the original game's first chapter, the Forsaken City. There's about 30 strawberries to collect, both scattered around the level and in Mario Sunshine-style jumping puzzles, complete with their own finger-snapping remix.

It was made in a week by the game's original devs, and while that does show in controls which are occasionally a li'l stiff and a camera that's hard to wrangle, it's otherwise just as charming as you'd expect.

What's interesting to me is that this is a solid proof of concept. Celeste's core moveset, surprisingly nobody, translates super well into a 3D collectathon-style game. I had a grand old time scurrying around these snowy ruins looking for berries, even if I'm super rusty when it comes to landing on anything resembling a platform. Here's some gameplay.

While I did encounter some performance hitches, again—made in a week, available for free. If you enjoyed the original Celeste back in 2018, this tribute is well worth the teeny-tiny download time. Just to gaze upon an adorable 3D Madeline, more than anything. Look at her, she's so hungry for strawberries.

An image of Madeline from Celeste 64, a tribute to the 2018 platformer made in a week by the game's original dev team, with retro-style graphics. — (Image credit: Maddy Makes Games)

There's also a timer built-in, naturally. Considering how speedrun-hungry Celeste's community was, I'm sure we're about to see this bite-sized game pushed to its absolute limits in the next week or so. The tech maestros of the internet shall descend upon it like a flock of seagulls on some dropped food, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.