Celeste is an extremely challenging platformer about climbing a mountain.
How challenging? Well, clearing the main story took me about five and a half hours, and I racked up 1118 deaths in that time - just over three deaths per minute, in other words. This is definitely the sort of game that takes practice and learning its challenges the hard way, as well as a fair bit of patience (or perhaps stubbornness) to keep trying in the face of defeat.
One of the things that kept me going was the story... because to be honest, I don't think this game is really about climbing a mountain at all. The mountain is merely a convenient place for the heroine to face her inner demons, and the challenges her own head throws at her would apply equally well to any task she chose. Her struggle, and the way she and the other characters react to it, is portrayed incredibly well and will be quite familiar to anyone who has ever dealt with anxiety or depression. In the end, even the game's own difficulty and the feeling of overcoming a major challenge plays into the story's message; it is neither easy nor simple to see things improve, but it is still possible.
Honestly, I'm not sure I can recommend the game to anyone who isn't at least somewhat of a hardcore gamer, because the difficulty is just ridiculous (although there is an option for an assist mode, which I'm told is easier, but I don't know how much easier since I've never used it). That said, though, like every other game that I truly love, this one's story is well worth the trouble.
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