Best of all, if you ever get stuck, the game allows you to access a deep menu of accessibility options that can help you across a rough patch.
Celeste is a breathless platformer in which you play a young woman facing fears both literal and metaphorical as she climbs to the summit of a mystical mountain. There’s not much more to the story than that, yet this award-winning game has one of the most affecting narratives I’ve ever experienced, probably because making my way to the emotional ending involved powering my way through some of the well-designed, punishingly difficult, yet somehow never frustrating platforming I’ve ever experienced. The game is built on a single, deceivingly simple mechanic—your character’s ability to string together multiple jumps before your stamina drops and forces you to touch solid ground again—that you’ll have to master with precision if you hope to make it to the summit. Best of all, if you ever get stuck, the game allows you to access a deep menu of accessibility options that can help you across a rough patch. (Though I found finally clearing a screen after dozens of deaths or more—my total death count for the entire game was in the thousands—so satisfying, I never turned them on.)