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.
- Mindwave is the story-driven spiritual successor to WarioWare that is so good I don't care that I keep messing up on the supposedly simple final boss
- I’m not sure what’s weirder: that someone made a sequel to a completely forgettable 37-year-old game I played as a kid, or that it was actually worth the wait
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.
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.
