Celeste is probably the hardest game I've ever played.
It's constructed from around 100 individual screens, each of which is a platforming puzzle. Each puzzle requires you to work out what exact sequence of jumps, double-jumps, wall-jumps, launches, springs, etc. will get you from the entrance to the exit(s). Each puzzle can be completed in less than ten seconds (with a few exceptions). Many of them can be completed in five seconds. Nearly all of them took me many many attempts.
Because it's not just working out how to solve the puzzle, it's then solving it in real-time while stressing about getting it wrong. You can't look at the section of screen you were just on, because you miss what you're hitting right now. You can't look ahead, because then your fingers start reaction to *that* rather than the obstacle you're on. There's no moment to think while you're doing it, there's only the moment you're existing in, and reacting to, and hopefully remembering what to do next without smacking into a wall, and sliding down it into an abyss made of spikes.
Between levels there are postcards with tips on. One of them reads "Be proud of your Death Count! The more you die the more you're learning. Keep going!" - which reminded me very-much of the tagline of the Dark Souls collection "Prepare To Die". Which I think gets misinterpreted too much as "This game is going to make you suffer." when it's supposed to mean "Let go of your fear of death. Use it to learn and improve." And, in much the same way, letting go of worrying about dying in the game definitely helped me to relax more, enjoy it, and see where it took me.
Which is lucky, because across all eight maps I died 2,379 times. Dying puts you back at the start of the screen. Which means that you've only wasted a few seconds and get to have another go straight away. It never felt unfair, and it always felt like the next time *might* be the one where I pulled off that screen, at which point the next one was pulling me in to see if I could do *it* first time.
Here's one screen which got me closer and closer to the end to the point where I realised I was going to succeed on the next couple of turns and so recorded it. And I'm now so close to the levels that I can't actually tell how hard it is. Although I do remember it took me a couple of dozen attempts to get right.
I am not good at these games. The average time to beat it is apparently around 8 hours. It took me 16. But beat it I did. There were many many levels where I took an initial look at the screen and thought "They can't expect me to do *that*" - and then three minutes later I leaped across an abyss, dropped under a moving spike, grabbed a giant block as it rose, ducked under another spike, threw myself across another abyss, and hopped out the far doorway. Giving me a regular sense of satisfaction that I'd managed to do something I thought was impossible just a few minutes previously.
I'm aware that there are harder games. And I haven't played all of the extra levels that aren't part of the main run. I don't think I will - at that point the difficulty ramps to the point where I don't think I'd be enjoying it any more. But I'm glad that I played what I did.
(The other thing it reminded me of most was
Kaizo Trap, the now-classic animation short set inside a video game.)
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