How Celeste Can Address Your Anxiety — By Provoking It

Wildfires as large as they’ve been in recorded history. Five months and counting of government quarantine orders. A country at a critical and family-fracturing point in racial reconciliation.

If you’re like me, then you’re struggling daily to fight anxiety and a general sense of indirection, pressure, and danger. So what could a videogame have to say about that kind of journey?

I was scrolling through Nintendo’s eShop one stressful afternoon in quarantine. I was looking for a game to get lost in, seeing as aimlessly scrolling through every scrollable interface I could find had gotten old (when you’re perusing LinkedIn, you know it’s time for a change). I scrolled through the eShop for a few minutes and came across this simple looking, bit-type platforming game called Celeste by Matt Makes Games . The reviews were positive enough, I had $10 to spare, and that was that.

I was immediately struck by the simplicity. It’s a game with exactly two actions, jump and dash. Combining these with your movements carries your playable character, a young girl with brilliant red hair, across increasingly impossible frames and from zone to zone throughout the game. Your goal: climb Celeste Mountain. The red-haired girl is determined to prove to herself that sh e’s capable of surmounting the odds and conquering the mountain… as well as her inner self.

It’s revealed at the end of the first level that she struggles with anxiety very significantly. Level 2 begins by revealing that the mountain’s mystical power has incarnated an alternate personality of the girl — one that embodies all of her anger, self-doubt, mistrust, and anxiety. She flees from the demonic being, and through the next few levels, is frustrated by this entity showing up, ruining her climbing attempts, and discouraging her. And the parts of the game when she intervenes are even harder than the rest of the game.

Have I mentioned how hard this game is? It has a deceptively simple beginning. Jumping will suffice to make it from platform to platform. But, by the end of level 1, I was falling for what seemed like hundreds of times before I made it to the next frame. Unlike many other platforming games, there’s no penalty for falling. This might seem like something that would calm you, until you very quickly encounter frames with almost every surface covered in spikes.

It’s a game that deals with anxiety but also creates it. Celeste will make you learn how to execute a perfect run dozens and dozens of time, only to mess up at the final moment and start over again on the frame. As I played, I had many moments where I had to put down the Switch in frustration, but I inevitably picked it back up, determined to finish the level. I had to conquer the mountain.

As the narrative proceeds, there are scenes where the red-haired girl is completely terrified by her circumstances. Her alternate identity pursuing her, or her climb being hindered — she has anxiety attacks on screen, in-game, and the player is there through it all. She meets a young man who is also climbing the mountain at one point, and as they travel together, they form a bond and a mutual understanding. The girl opens up about her severe anxiety and explains that she has the climb the mountain because she’s proving it to herself, but she has doubts still.

While they’re traveling together on a perilous gondola, they suddenly jerk to a stop and realize that the mechanism is jammed. They’re stuck thousands of feed up in the snowy air. When the girl panics, the screen goes fuzzy and the music becomes intense, but the young man speaks up, saying, “There’s a trick my grandpa told me one time about panic attacks. Imagine a feather floating in front of you. Breathing in lets the feather down softly, and breathing out pushes up with air. Keep the feather as still as you can.”

The feather appears on screen as the gondola fades into a slight gray. You pull the sticks back to breathe in, and let them forward to exhale. The feather floats. The frantic music fades down a bit. Breathe in, breathe out. In, then out. The music is now a distant memory. The gondola has faded into black. In, then out. The feather, the only thing on the screen, is perfectly still. In, then out. In, then out.

The panic attack is over.

Throughout the experience of Celeste, I realized the second narrative being constructed through the game. I was becoming aware of my own need to prove to myself that I am capable. Perhaps I need to be capable of making it through COVID-19 and through 2020, or through my career search, or the upended nature of my 5-year plan. I needed to climb the mountain almost as much as the red-haired girl who I had accidentally thrown into the abyss a million times. My drive was her drive. And her anxiety was becoming somewhat like my own.

But she learns to best her anxiety, and as I played the game, so did I. Some frames of difficult platforming would take me only one or two attempts by the end of the game because I had learned to master the physics of the game, and, more importantly, to be undaunted by the seemingly impossible circumstances and to know that somehow, there was a way through to the end.

I highly recommend that you experience this game for yourself. You will not regret it, even though you may damage a controller or two by throwing it across the room. Celeste has helped me to integrate my struggles into who I am, and to believe that I am strong and capable, despite what legitimate hardship and apparent ineptitude I may encounter.

Whatever your mountain is; the racial reconciliation fight, indirection, joblessness, existential fear or plain boredom, there is a way to the top, and Celeste just might help you get there.

If you’re okay with the game being spoiled, here’s the conclusion of the story:

The climber learns how to talk to her alternate identity, and they make amends, but only after the player is thrown from close to the top of the mountain all the way to the bottom. They accept that they are a part of each other, and that if they make peace and work together, then they may be able to conquer the mountain after all.

The cool thing is, this partnership isn’t just nominal — the player actually gets one extra boost. The gameplay experience is revolutionized, the player is so much more capable, and some of the final frames are as challenging as they are satisfying to defeat with a double boost.

This story of integrating the more annoying and sometimes destructive parts of oneself was provocative and empowering for me. Guys, I would highly recommend that you experience this story yourself! You might be surprised at the mountain you find yourself climbing.

Climb on,

Jesse R.