Why Does Celeste Make Us Feel Anxious?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2020
- Support me on Patreon!: / architectofgames
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Nintendo are the kings of making fun, expressive platformers - but Mario's dominance has meant that his fun-first design has overshadowed different kinds of platformers, and that's a shame! Fear, stress, anxiety, frustration - all of these things can be used as the core emotion to build a game around, and doing this can lead to some great experiences - but how? and why? The Architect is going to double-jump their way into some tricky platformers to find out the answers to exactly those questions.
You Saw-
Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 2010
New Super Luigi Bros - 2013 (the year of Luigi)
Super Mario 3D World - 2013
Super Mario Sunshine- 2002
Mario Odyssey- 2017
Shovel Knight- 2014 (Btw I got King of Cards for free from yacht club even though I already owned shovel knight so I guess that's my disclosure)
DOOM- 2016
Resident Evil 7- 2017
Celeste- 2017
Bad North- 2017
Grow Home- 2016
Super Meat Boy- 2010
Sonic Adventure 2- 2001
Sonic Mania- 2017
Sonic Generations- 2011
Sonic Unleashed- 2008
Sonic The Hedgehog - 1991
Sonic Forces - 2017
Sonic Adventure - 1999
GRIS - 2018
A Short Hike- 2019
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons- 2013
Getting Over It- 2017
Dark Souls- 2012
XCOM: Enemy Unknown- 2012
Kirby Star Allies- 2018
Darkest Dungeons- 2015
Journey to the Savage Planet- 2020 - เกม
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All I ever wanted was to post links to my patreon on the internet, support my dream for just $1 a month. Plz. :www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
DaE think this guy sounds like *INSERT ENGLISH MALE HERE* maybe their tweets are the same too: twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Americanised idiot.
i know im randomly asking but does anyone know of a way to log back into an Instagram account..?
I somehow forgot my password. I would love any assistance you can give me
@Forrest Darren instablaster =)
@Winston Dwayne Thanks for your reply. I found the site thru google and Im waiting for the hacking stuff now.
I see it takes a while so I will reply here later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
@Winston Dwayne it did the trick and I actually got access to my account again. I am so happy!
Thank you so much, you saved my account :D
When you are depressed, doing anything seems as difficult and pointless as climbing a mountain.
I don't know why, but this thought really helps me. Thank you.
Just wanted to say: but climbing a mountain is fun but i got the message
@@ddm_gamer Also kind of the point. Climbing a mountain is difficult and pointless if you just think about it, but actually doing it is better. Obviously you can't just "do it" and stop being depressed, and climbing a mountain won't cure depression, but refusing to try to climb the mountains will make the depression that much worse.
Rel
@@timverma and thats the point of depression
Or you know. You could go for the golden strawberries and experience advanced anxiety.
Oh god
This isn't your average, everyday anxiety.
This is... _advanced_ anxiety!
3 strawberry+moon berry+golden strawberry Farewell challenge is the epitome of that. I believe it has been done like twice on camera or something insane like that. Ultimatum Anxiety right there.
now that someone has done a fully canon run (202 berries, exactly 1 death for moon berry), I suppose the anxiety levels can’t go any higher than that
Its funny that you could probably read the names of everyone who has gotten every golden strawberry on the switch quicker than you could watch this video purely due to the difficult of the golden strawberries + the switch's awful controllers
>Talking about Shovel Knight.
>"Chaotic Momentum"
_>King Knight._
Plague Knight: Am I a joke to you?
Plague Knight is a joke to everyone and that's why we love him
@@ArchitectofGames he's not a joke to mona
Plague Knight's movements aren't that chaotic, you should watch Game Maker's Toolkit's vide about The core mechanics of Shovel Knignt :)
@@ThatWasConvincive defintly he has the second best kit for movement behind specter knight
@@ThatWasConvincive they definitely are more chaotic than King's though
5:51 couldn't agree more. Sometimes I feel like the game is designed to be *just* tough enough so that you finish hard sections and consistently say, "how the hell did I do that?"
These darker, more mature games always seem to be way more relaxing and comforting though.
I genuinely enjoy getting lost in art, when there's more to a game than just "fun gameplay" it's much easier for me to relax and actually get immersed
I have to agree. More "realistic" games just give off a bigger sense of normality for me that I can actually relate to and enjoy while still being calm. That's something that starts of with something as simple as a color palette for me
Btw. Hätte nicht erwarted dich bei solch einem Video anzutreffen Corrupted! Bin ein riesiger Fan von dir
Climbing a mountain has been a symbol of adversity since mountains existed-- I think it's very neat to see that cultural shorthand so commonly adapted to games, and I think it's all the easier because climbing and platforming is so well represented in games. Thrown on top of that, upward momentum/moving up the screen feels *really* good. I think Getting Over It is the game I've most seen explore the feeling of going *down* the screen, but that ultimately facilitates the dopamine of climbing back up.
Anyways, awesome video as always!
Downwell
it's in the name
@@buttonasas Pffft yeah, fair play.
Why climb up mountains when you can just find a way to fly over them or go through them, or just simply blow them up?..
We can also add Death Stranding to the list of 'evocative games about climbing mountains', cos that constitutes at least 1/3rd of the game I think. :P
You mabye joke, but Death Stranding does tie in with the theme of this video, it's about having to cross a place that is difficult to cross, and making it easier for everyone with the persistent world infrastructure
The other 2/3rd parts of it are unnecessary dialogue and cinematics
@@juanrodriguez9971 I'd say that's one third also, the final third is non-mountainous traversal + combat situations.
Petition for Architect to make a ten-part series on strand-type games.
@@juanrodriguez9971 try like1/10, when it's there it fills allot, but you have a few extra miles to go to get there.
Celeste's breathing exercise alone (let alone what the rest of the themes has done for my anxiety) has helped me enormously much in coping with anxiety better. It's the best breathing exercise I've ever tried and I really didn't expect that from a game. It's fantastic in so many ways. Easily the best representation of mental health in games.
ifind myself imagining that feather from time to time. It helps a ton
15:10 wait a minute, Undertale starts with you climbing a mountain too.
"Because all his games are so damn happy:
*Super Paper Mario* :
"Ima gonna stop you right there"
Super Paper Mario was a vibe check for the franchise
I, for one, accept near perfect alien Adam as my new game design content overlord. All hail near perfect alien Adam.
All Hail.
Long may he reign
>Didn't say "Maybe Getting Over It will help you to...get over it."
0/10 missed the obvious joke.
He's gotta leave some of the low hanging fruit to us
Not gonna lie, I would unsubscribe if he made this joke.
Celeste made me cry. It really was such an emotional journey from start to finish, and the level design is so masterful at inducing those emotions. I also love the story being so blunt about its meaning. It could have easily relied on just the level design to convey that, but the forwardedness and rawness of it brings it all together into a really amazing experience. Seriously, if you haven't played Celeste yet, do it !
13:08: "simply getting Diogenes to do what you what him to, is a challenge in itself"
seems about right
12:29 "you might recognize "Getting over it" as the favorite of the shouty let'splay people of few years back.'
Me: Did you just said few years ago?
I just had this moment, where did the last 3 years go?
I had the same feeling
i feel old
I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve discovered that a “recent” game/movie/event was actually a decade ago :(
Another emotional game about climbing a mountain: Journey
man a short hike has the most immaculate vibes ever, finally climbing the mountain and watching the sunset before jumping off the peak to fly, not glide anymore, with all 20 feathers one last time felt amazing.
"A short hike" seems to be the same game process as Grow Up / Home, which you showed before. At the start your character is heavily limited, but with time and stuff collected, you can move around more and more freely. It really gives you a good sense of progression.
*watch the first ~2 minutes*
*check the title in case you opened the wrong video*
*no, it's right, it's celeste*
Lmao same
This makes me even sadder that I can't play platformers thanks to my disabilities. (I can't make my hands work together well enough to handle jumps and the like)
Good news! Celeste's assist mode might be able to help you. You can use it to make spikes not hurt you or slow down time. Since I don't know the specifics of your situation I suggest googling it and seeing if any of the features may make playing easier for you
@@shempai1166 I should really buy the game and try it! I'm a little worried that I might not be able to do it even with the assist mode though...
Then play with one hand. Keyboard!
As other people have said, Celeste's Assist mode is incredibly comprehensive and lets you finetune the difficulty to exactly what you're comfortable with. If you're worried about motor control stuff, you can slow down the game to a fraction of the speed which gives you more than enough time to make the button inputs in your own time - I highly recommend giving it a go at least!
@@JustIsold The assist mode is highly granular and customizable. It's really meant for anyone to play
For the entire video I thought you were Mark Brown until I saw the profile picture below the video again when it was over.
"OMG I can't believe he won't mention Dark So.... oh"
RIP Adam
Long Live Alien Adam
(The vids are still good so I’m cool with it)
The more I hear about Celeste, the more I learn about it. At first, I passed on it, but now I think I should get it one day.
Makes me question if you actually got it
@@azellumius8835 I'm more interested in CrossCode now.
@@ferdinandavila-soto7233 did u ever get it?
@@d4s0n282 No, and at this point I'll probably put it off forever since I keep finding more things that interest me.
@@ferdinandavila-soto7233 DO IT, put it on your wishlist and buy it next time its on sale(although its worth double its price legit)
I just got Celeste physical edition for the switch a week ago. This couldn't've come out at a better time
The first time i got something like this was in the final confrontation in Rayman advance, where dark Rayman chases you through the level.
God i can remember the tension i felt back then even now.
4:55 Everyone calls her Badeline. XD
*Reads video title*
Great I'm already anxious...
I just re-watched some of your old videos today and you pick today for a new one. Great timing 👍😁
I'm really excited for this trend of examining and appreciating the different emotions that games can provide that go beyond "fun".
This is so great. I’ve struggled with anxiety as long as I can remember, but just recently - through a lot of therapy, support groups, personal growth, etc - I’ve gotten to a much better place and ease of managing it. Celeste spoke to me in a really personal way, as I think it did a lot of people. I also went through Madeline’s journey of realizing you can’t fight the things you hate about yourself. They’re a part of you. You have to embrace it, accept it, and learn to love it in order to find peace and growth and happiness.
Anyway, on a game design note. You alluded to this but I wanted to say it out loud: anyone notice how Mario levels are typically open plains with only one or two things to focus on at a time, while Celeste levels are dense and cramped and force you to skirt around obstacles in narrow spaces just to advance a few pixels of screen distance? Just the visual experience of looking at a level in Celeste is already anxiety-inducing. There’s so much going on! So much that can kill me! So many moving parts and things to keep track of and AAAA! But as you try and fail and try some more, you come to see each part of each screen as one piece of a cohesive whole, and realize what you need to do, which skills the screen is testing, and how to accomplish the task. Just like any anxiety-inducing problem, the key is not to panic, but to break the problem down to its constituent parts and handle it one bit at a time.
Also, no other game delivers the same feeling of mastery and growth as Celeste did for me. There’s only three player actions, like you said, and each level only has a handful of gimmicks. But as you come to understand each of those mechanics and gimmicks on a deeper and deeper level, you’ll find yourself doing things on your first try you never even thought possible before. It is so much a game about pushing past your previous limits and becoming more than you thought you could.
Celeste is often compared to Dark Souls just because they’re both hard. But Dark Souls is all about crushing the player under a feeling of hopelessness and oppressive difficulty, which makes it rewarding when you seemingly defy the game by overcoming it anyway. In contrast, it’s clear from the get-go that Celeste deeply wants you to succeed. Dark Souls’ punishing death mechanic is its most iconic feature, but deaths in Celeste are a complete non-event, just another step on the road to achievement. The game even has a pop-up early on encouraging players to think of their death counter as a good thing, a sign of how far you’ve come. All in all, Celeste is such a heartfelt and wholesome experience, and deeply, perfectly Canadian.
Well said.
Couldn't agree more!
Celeste never really made me feel anxious, it was sanely challenging. Not with negative emotions, not with fake progression system, it was really difficult but the game constantly push you to think "yes this is hard but don't worry, you can make it".
In the end the game taught me that I could face any difficulty, I just needed to stay calm and to know when to take a break. It acted like a sort of meditation on me
A short hike was an amazing experience. Great ending sequence too
This channel is amazing. You should do a video on games Redesigning Death, or on Adaptive Soundtracks, that would be so original and new and never done before.
The stretched image of Super Mario Bros 3 at the beginning made me a bit anxious
2:14
"If it's not fun, why bother?" - Reggie Fils-Aimé
He was wrong... lol
@@TheThomas2730 that wasn't the point of the video
Hot take, Celeste is actually a horror game
this got me out of bed, thanks bro
When he skipped over Plague Knight when talking about how fun the Shovel Knight characters are. I felt that 😔
Glad to see more videos on my favourite game ❤️
"his (mario) games are just so damn happy"
Mario party : **nervous sweating**
Honestly, I’ve recently been playing Fallout 4 survival mode, with an even tougher mod for it. Winning any fight felt like such an uphill battle. It’s honestly amazing.
*"[...] who I'm gonna call Badeline."*
You make it sound like you came up with that. Everybody has been calling her that online since the week the game was released (I was active on the Celeste subreddit back in the day).
I think he was just establishing that it's an unofficial name that he'd be using for the video?
You make it sound like he's not capable of coming up with that. Someone that doesn't pay close attention to fandoms can easily miss non-canon information, and besides, Badeline isn't exactly the most clever name.
@@irastris He's capable of coming up with that, but he's not living in a vacuum. If he's read *anything* about Celeste since the game's release that mentioned the character, chances are that's what she was called.
Also, I'm not accusing him in any way, shape, or form. I love his videos, and he's mostly as objective as one can be. I know that's not what he was trying to say. I was just making him aware that it's how it sounded from a viewer's perspective.
He says that because that's not an official name, in ANY capacity. "I'm going to call it this" in no way implies that you made anything up, it simply makes clear that the name you are using is not the official name.
Fwiw I do seem to recall an interview with the devs where they said Badeline was the internal name they used but it's ofc not the official one because the player character doesn't need to be named Madeline
I love when a game makes me say
"Ugh"
Then burst out laughing at my own terrible gameplay.
Shoutout to Alex Deloach. I've heard that name so many times now, but I still wouldn't be able to spell it from memory.
My favourit Moment was when I thought I will never get through that and did it on the first try!
13:21 Oh no! This hurt just watching it!
Shout out suggestion : Daryl talks game, Razbuten or Gamedenker, who are three great small channel about video game stuff :D
I feel like I've already seen 10 different versions of this same video made by different channels.
Wait okay the stuff that's not about Celeste was more original.
It's quite good to see how much broad set of emotions video games can deliver nowadays! Thanks for the vid!
What an interesting take on how emotions and videogames tangle up together.
As a new vidgame player whos intimidated by classic games, it made me happy when i saw A Short Hike. Finishing it made me want to actually try more platformer games
Getting over it gets fun when you get the hang of the controls, trying to beat it fast is pretty fun, especially when you nail a swing or consequitive swings
Love you videos man thanks
"Horror makes you scared"
Oh my god really? I never noticed!
Man, I'm in the B-Side of Mirror Temple, and I took a break from it. But whenever I think of going back to it I feel anxious.
This vid showed up as the first vid on my TH-cam recommendations while I was trying to find music to calm me down while I was crying from too much stresss! The absolute worst timing for thst showing make me laugh! So thanks haha!
Spec ops the line, Space beast terror fright, rain world, all focus on stress and helplessness.
im not convinced about the doppelganger. i'm watching you.
Watching this video just gave me PTSD of all the b and c versions of the levels....thanks!
for me i felt anxious at first but literally only on the tutorial. the rest of the game i felt just happy
My entire experience in Celeste was just irritation or outright frustration at the game. Controls are hard to master (the amount of times I've rushed in the wrong direction because the stick was not perfectly diagonal is absurd), but they are even harder to understand. Celeste was a huge safety net for you to recover from mistakes in form of Climb ability, but it doesn't give you any time to use that safety net. My "oh ****" moments, when I have only just realised I've made a mistake and was about to die, happened right when I already died.
I've never felt anxious in this game, death is so common that it's just a setback, and an annoying one.
Earlier stages felt like button mashing untill I find that perfect password to finish the level. But later ones, starting at the hotel, felt just pure random. I have no time to think and to try to avoid those blobs, just because I am already dead.
All of these are reasons I did not have any good time in Celeste. Yesterday, after another set of deaths, I decided just to pick something else, so I've played Hyper Light Drifter for about 20 mins. Those 20 minutes felt better than my entire in Celeste.
Basically, Celeste is absolutely not for me, and I do not understand why so many people loved it, I just don't.
You could always turn on assist mode. I know I did when I first got to chapter 5's seekers. I was not up for the fear of having an enemy chase me around and dash at me so, having learned of assist mode, I turned on invincibility and went through the rest of the chapter that way. I also experimented with slowing down the game speed but found that it was not for me. It sounds like it would help you, though. Also, dash assist is a thing now. That might help if you're playing with a controller. You'd have much more control over which direction you're dashing in.
Btw, mad respect to you for playing Celeste with a controller that has dash directions mapped to a stick. I play on PC but I've heard of the struggles. I have enough trouble with where I dash without something like that. Seriously, respect dude.
I personally loved it. Usually, you respawn at the beginning of the screen so you won't really lose anything by dying.
Man I love these
11:00 This is also experienced in Terraria both in movement and other properties (mining, building, design, fighting, etc.). You start weak and slow to feel like a god with endgame stuff.
I was playing getting over it, at the bucket part, about to finish the game...
And then a bug caused my save file to dissapear and had me starting from the very beginning.
You can imagine my frustration after that happened
I would love to see what you think about pathologic! Seems like a game with all these emotions all at once
You must love Cave Johnson from Portal, your humor is so similar, I love it. That bit about you having been replaced by an alien could have been Cave talking.
*Retro and Platformer games have a certain charm to them*
Game Designers who understand the identity of their game and implement interesting ideas will result in a worthwhile game that will be remembered
I don't remember the jumping on fish part of Celeste. Maybe that was on the extra runs I didn't finish those, my fingers already hurt from A Side.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii makes me feel anxious with no relief because there is a constant threat of losing powerups and getting stuck as small Mario and getting only mushrooms from ? blocks. It forces me to play as carefully as possible in order to keep the Fire Flower, Propeller, or Penguin Suit. The Toad houses that have rewards give you only one attempt for the entire game and always have the threat of getting nothing.
*sees title*
Wait... What?
Maybe it's because i consider the instant respawns a safety net themeselves, but aside from one b-side stage, I've never felt anxiety throughout Celeste, the quick and close-by respawns made it very easy to accept failure and the controls are ridiculously tight.
Now, hollow knight on the other end, with its minutes-long boss battles and the dreaded path of pain... That's anxiety.
"mario's moveset"
*shows luigi gameplay*
dude you and todd in the shadows are the two critical analysts that i like the most nowadays and basically catch my only two interests nowadays aswell i love your content keep it up
Thanks !!
Long difficult sections without rest are super anxiety inducing- ever gone through path of pain in Hollow Knight? By the end I was shaking like mad, I realized after each section that I had held by breath pretty much the entire time
My favorite subject
TH-cam sensed, that I was about to go to bed, and immediately notified me about this video.
13:22 this hurts
I just love this game. I’ll listen to anything you have to say about it
Death Frost Doom is my favorite game about climbing a mountain.
A short hike sounds similar to the experience of progressing through Death Stranding. At first it's a struggle to navigate, but by mid game that's changed drastically and become a really fun and empowering journey.
The control and abillities of your character are also well seen in wow classic. You start as literall nobody with clumsy movement, little to no abillities, and literally everything is potential threat. But at the max level you have shiny armor, full kit of spells to use, mastered your character movements and can deal with some things on your own. Also its interesting to compare retail and classic wow, when in classic wow your abillities hits hard from lvl 1, you have safety spells, you can easily take multiple enemies on same time. This makes you feel powerful and respected, makes you feel like a strong hero. But it makes the world feel small and unrelevant if it posses little to no challenge, classic on other hands makes you feel small and lost in gigantic world yet to be explored and conquered.
Octo Expansion gives me a feeling of dread for some reason, especially the deapsea metro and some is the music is just depressing like 8 regret
Does anyone know what game is shown at 2:50? I like strategy games and the graphics look clean and simple.
15:15 Yes! Climbing is really good. Anyone who's has tried it will understand :D
Thanks for mentioning A Short Hike.
Anyone would be anxious after dying for the 3 thousandth time on a save trying to get the c sides done
Everybody chillin till you get to the Cotton Alley Dark World
I really enjoyed Celeste, but this was the first time I've heard of A Short Hike. Looks super interesting, I definitely plan to give it a try sometime
Go give it a try now. Epic is giving it away this week.
The funny thing is I never feel overly stressed in Celeste. I might sometimes be stumped, but something about the aesthetic and music design make me kinda go into a zen mode, which is brilliant because the game is bloody difficult so if it didn't mitigate that frustration somehow most players would quit before the good part.
the return of tghe best youtuber ever!
Hello, I'd love it if you made a book about how to make the best game, including character design, enemy desighn, art, mood, etc.. That's all I'm gonna say. Pls
1:47 you wanna talk about a chaotic sense of momentum? We’ll plague knight is were it’s at
11:20
Piano players: I am four parallel universes ahead of you
I played about 100 hours of Celeste even tho I love the game it gave me a horrible time thanks to my already annoying anxiety. But it helped me at least a little to learn how to treat anxiety and how to deal with it. I think that the game has maybe more parallels to real life than we all have realized yet but I could be looking into things way too deep.
It's incredible how Super Meat Boy is always remembered and praised but nobody ever talks about or even mentions The End is Nigh (which is by the same guy). It would have also been very relevant to the video's topic.
I wonder why it got under the radar so much.
Finally, Celeste. My favorite game.
"A Short Hike" is the best game
I completed celeste yesterday. Took me 13 hours and almost 3000 deaths, 1000 deaths in the last level alone. Such an amazing game. Im far from done though. I have found 31 strawberries so far, and barely seen other collectibles.
If anxiety was a source of power, I could power the earth for centuries