Celeste Dev Releases Sequel to Celeste Classic To Celebrate Third Anniversary

The team behind the hit hard-as-nails platformer Celeste are celebrating the third anniversary of the game's release, and they've made a quick sequel to the game's 8-bit progenitor as part of the festivities. If you've played Celeste, you might have encountered the 8-bit version on the fictional PICO-8 video game console as a little extra.

What many people don't know is that the PICO-8 game, which was built in three days as part of a game jam, was actually the prototype for the entire Celeste project. This sequel, titled Celeste 2: Lani's Trek, features a completely new core mechanic and playable character. Lani obtains a grappling hook early on in Celeste 2, and it quickly becomes your main method of traversal. However, Lani can also use the grappling hook to grab items, including snowballs and spring platforms, which quickly ramps up the complexity of the game.

Celeste 2: Lani's Quest is available for free on developer Maddy Thorson's Itch page. Though the game defaults to keyboard controls, we recommend using your preferred controller, because it requires pinpoint precision just to get past the first few screens. According to Thorson and co-developer Noel Berry, Celeste 2 was built in just a few days, and it was inspired by a community event for the anniversary of Celeste that was organized by fans of the 2018 game. Late last year, Thorson published a blog post that explored the gender identity of the game's trans protagonist Madeline, and how that overlapped with their own experience.