“Celeste” is a Perfect Balm for my Anxiety

I play games for a lot of reasons, but one of the primary reasons these days is to relieve stress. Games are fun, I can get wrapped up in the stories they tell and explore my agency over those stories. I love a challenge, don’t get me wrong, but I will also admit that sometimes I need a pure power fantasy. I’ve been known to play Civilization on the lowest difficulty so I can reliably steamroll the map, letting stress and anxiety melt away while I slowly take over the world.

I recognize that there is value in overcoming a significant goal, and that is a major part of stress relief for me too. Grinding away meditatively and then ending in a spectacular battle, with an accompanying victorious rush of dopamine, can wash away any old rough day.

But I struggle with games that are intentionally punishing, because these often subvert my purpose. I don’t necessarily play games to achieve a level of excellence, though I applaud those who do. I rarely click with a Soulsborne game because after dying over and over again due to repeated mistakes, I often feel even more wound up than when I started. This is difficult for me, because there is so much I love about those games in terms of enemy design, lore, and everything else everyone celebrates about it, but I never get to see any of it because I rarely beat the first boss. Furthermore, a lot of games that are intentionally punishing revel in their difficulty, taunting you when you die. If the game doesn’t, the playerbase will. The whole exercise is exhausting, and far from relieving stress, only alienates me from my own hobby.

So I was surprised at how well I’ve been clicking with Celeste, the new challenging platformer from Towerfall dev Matt Makes Games. Celeste is challenging, requiring precise movements with little room for error. Nearly everything in the game is a danger, and if you encounter something dangerous, you die and are sent back to the start of the room. The way forward is not always immediately obvious, requiring repeated deaths as you experiment with the level to see what works. I am only a few chapters in and I have died hundreds of times.

But the stakes are low. I am constantly reminding myself that there is an assist mode waiting if I need it. The rooms are short, so dying costs little progress. Most of the collectibles unlock nothing, and are only for bragging rights. After a short period of experimentation, a way forward usually becomes clear, and all that remains is execution.

That support, that (my lutheran background is showing) Grace toward the player is underlined in the game’s story and themes. Madeline, the protagonist, suffers from anxiety and depression. In an early scene, she calls her mom, who talks her through a panic attack. She appears to be climbing Celeste Mountain to prove she can. She gets sad, she gets overwhelmed. She spends a chapter running away from an embodiment of her self-doubt. She gets self-conscious about having her picture taken. Madeline is constantly taking a breath to remind herself that she can do this. The game opens with a card that tells you that you can do this. When I’ve struggled on a screen, I’ve literally paused the game, taken three deep breaths, and said “You can do this” picturing the card.

In the last year or so I’ve been working to come to terms with my own anxiety. I’ve been admitting to myself that I find loud noises triggering and hard to handle in a way that is not true for most people. I get extremely nervous during social events and often need a day alone, or just with my wife, to recover form the energy required to engage strangers socially. When I’m waiting for something, whether it’s tax returns or a package from Amazon, I check the status constantly, I have to stop myself from making phone calls, I spiral.

I see myself in Madeline. I see myself in the way she engages with Theo, who in the early game seems like he has it all together. Of course he doesn’t care if he makes it to the top. Theo will succeed no matter what. But me? I have to make it to the top. The top of the mountain is the thing that will make me whole. The game plays as a fun way to engage my own feelings about my anxiety, my self-doubt, my self-worth. I have found this game to be really hard, but also extremely soothing. It knows I have to walk away sometimes. It reminds me that nothing bad happens if I don’t get every strawberry. It gently prods that there is an assist mode if I need it.

Celeste is a beautiful game because it holds your hand, not like you were a child, but like you were a loved one in need of support.