From the creators of Celeste

The canon queer character of the day is:

Madeline from Celeste, who is a transgender woman.

[Celeste] : Madeline's Hair

"The character sprite is drawn without her hair, and then we add it in afterwards in real time. The hair is a list of about 5 or 6 points that follow each other with an offset and maximum distance, with the first point being anchored to her head. Each point just draws a simple circle, reducing in size the further away it is.

The offsets of each point are usually down + slightly away from her (ex. -0.5, 2.0), so that in general they rest hanging downwards, however the offsets can be changed depending on the environment (ex. when there's wind the offsets are more like (-1, 0) so it doesn't fall).

There's also a few different frames of her bangs / top of her hair that covers up where this list of points actually meets her head. Each animation has metadata associated with it on where to render the hair, so they match up with the animation."

(Noel Berry, Celeste Co-Creator)

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Source:

Celeste (PC) checkpoint images uploaded by Kirows (website: Spriter's Resource) (section: Celeste, PC/Computer)

pride month may be over but fuck you madeline trans icon

celestroidvania

Extremely OK Games has released the reveal trailer for “explor-action platformer” Earthblade. It will launch for PC via Steam in 2024.

Here is an overview of the game, via its Steam page:

You are Nevoa, an enigmatic child of Fate returning at long last to Earth, in this explor-action platformer from the creators of Celeste. Earthblade‘s lush pixel art world offers seamless exploration, challenging combat, and countless mysteries to pick apart. Travel the remnants of a ruined world, encounter denizens both friend and foe, and piece together the Earth’s fractured history.

Watch the trailer below.

Reveal Trailer

Lena Raine - Celeste: Complete Sound Collection | Ship To Shore PhonoCo. | 2021 | Clear with White, Pink & Purple Splatter

the fact that I cannot find nearly as much Celeste content/fanart on this site is I can of hollow knight or ace attorney makes me very upset because goddammit I know it’s here somewhere but the tags aren’t that helpful because there are a billion characters from other things named Celeste

30 Under 30: Small Indie Teams Making Big Waves With ID@Xbox

Making games is hard. Making great games is harder. But making great games with less than thirty people is unfathomable. Which is why The Indie Informer teamed up with ID@Xbox to laud thirty indie creators who decided to take on the impossible.

If you’re an indie fan, you should be watching Xbox closely. With ID@Xbox — an initiative helping independent developers self-publish on Microsoft’s console — offering opportunities like the empowering Developer Acceleration Program and recently announced spotlight Indie Selects, Team Green has been building an impressive ecosystem for gaming’s greatest smaller-scale gems. In its more than…

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Tonight, at 7 pm CDT, I'll be playing Celeste for the very 1st time over on my YouTube channel. This was made possible by Stellyriafae, who was one of the winners of the charity wheel spins. Link to the stream is above this message.

[Review] Celeste (PS4)

Pure platforming perfection.

This has been on my backlog for a while. People raved about it, uh... five years ago now. Having revisited the “hardcore platformer” genre with the Meat Boy games, I then checked out Maddy Thorson’s Jumper games, one of the progenitors of this style of game in 2004. This was illuminating in showing to me how foundational her work was, and how her implementation built on itself over 14 years, culminating (with the help of a team of collaborators) in this, a finely honed and deeply personal game.

Celeste started as a Pico-8 game (now called Celeste Classic), which is still available for free (and included as an unlockable bonus in this game, which I sometimes like to call “Super Celeste”). That version was a single-screen affair, the limitations of the screen size and the Pico-8 fantasy hardware making for something designed super tightly and efficiently. With this full release it’s been enhanced and expanded a hundredfold, while keeping those devious but fair platforming puzzles. Madeline has an octo-directional air dash and can climb on walls, and Celeste iterates these concepts to death, wringing every drop of platforming bliss out of these mechanics while mixing in new gimmicks.

I can’t overstate how much this game impressed me. Every screen challenged me first to figure out how to do it, then challenged my fingers to accomplish it. And most astonishingly, I never ever got frustrated with it even when dying dozens of times on a screen. My breaking point did finally come halfway through the “Farewell” chapter, added in a free update three years after the initial release; this chapter occasionally seemed aimed more at the speedrunners who had gathered around the game than casual folks like me, and when wavedashing started to be required I had to tap out. Otherwise I’m proud to say I did get all strawberries (an optional collectible scattered around for extra mini-challenges), completed all B-sides (new harder levels in each world), and found all hearts, and I was satisfied.

But! I was able to see the rest of the content, thanks to Assist Mode. These options let you customise your experience and are a great boon for all players whatever their ability. So I could turn on invincibility and infinite dashes just to push past those final sections that were at my limit, and choose when to try again without them. Everyone is going to have a different breaking point in these games after all, so making it more accessible is a wonderful thing, especially if you want to experience the full story.

It’s well worth it to do so, as the narrative weaves through the gameplay and they only enhance each other. Madeline’s struggles to climb the Mountain reflect her own inner struggles, her self-exploration as meaningful as her exploration of the beautiful but harsh locales, and her personal demons become externalised, confronted, and cathartically reconciled with. The game has a lot to say about mental health and I feel like it treats it sensitively and honestly, not to mention the underlying trans allegory (for more on this please do read Maddy’s essay on the subject at her website Maddy Makes Games).

On the one hand I’m glad I waited at least three years so I could play the game in a more finished state, with the extra content (and deadnames removed). But I also regret waiting too long to join in conversations about it with my friends when it was the hot new thing. Because I want to talk about this game now, I want to watch speedruns and secret guides, I want to read and reread Maddy’s essays. I fell in love with Celeste, I think it’s the pinnacle of its genre... and I can’t wait to see what the team comes up with next (it’s called Earthblade and it looks great so far!).

my hype for Earthblade cannot be understated

it might seem like im just a totk hater, and to be fair, i AM, but its not bc i think its bad in every way- if it was all bad, ok, then its all bad and we can forget it happened and can all accept that-

but totk specifically hit the jackpot of -things that frustrate me so much i cannot let go and need to talk about it-

its part of my current hyperfixation (or whatever is the right word), botw is one of my all time favorite games, and that one had so many mysteries i was DEEPLY invested in, its got great music and some absolutely fanatstic moments, some ideas are great to fine, but it doesnt make sense, i hate time travel like little else in games, it constantly contradicts itself, the franchise, even its previous game its supposed to be a sequel to, i felt like i was made fun of by the game itself, for caring so much about what they had set up or done in botw, the moment i saw what they did to the shrine of life i felt so devasted i could hear people pointing and laughing at me for having cared about it, the writing treating me like i am so brainless i cannot connect dot one and two when there are only two dots in front of me labeld 1 and 2 that it then tells me to connect directly, to my face, multiple times, before showing me how to draw a line, its full, so SO FULL of missed opportunities, its got choices in there that are just nothing but frustrating bc there were a hundred other ones, i can see what you could do wit hthe basic ideas, theres people that worship it to a point you cant say anything even mildly critical, even about objectively bad things (there is no excuse for that godawful arrow menu) bc they will jump at you like a rabid animal-

i could go on but you get the point, never in my life has anything hit me like that

he's the man

The real beginners experience is getting to the Archive area too quick, making friends with the people who saved your ass from sky shrimp, and then finding out they're heading to somewhere called eden and were just collecting lights last minute.

Cut to ubering tiny day 3 me to Eden cause I shitposted about speedrunning, making it to the end with a team of 5, and then getting absolutely fucking obliterated. I felt so bad I had no idea we were supposed to die. The veterans were so cool abt it tho they got a solid giggle. Extremely fun experience 11/10 would recommend

EQUESTRIAN VASCO and here I thought I couldn't love your ocs anymore 😩 as an equestrian it is so nice when you find someone who also has equestrian ocs!!

It is literally so hard to find equestrian ocs outside of the immediate equine art community and its a nice breath of fresh air! <3

Yeah! He's an outdoorsy type and wealthy enough to keep horses, I reckon he's been riding since very young age and usually gets along with animals well. On top of that, his hobbies include falconry, hunting and fencing.

Please temper your expectations though, I know very little about horses, how they work and what you do with them ´v`' There's a good chance I might get things backwards despite my best efforts.