The Game Designer’s Lab: Where Ideas, Code, and Creativity Collide

Insights from Celeste’s Journey in Game Design

When Celeste was first introduced, it was far from the lush, award-winning game that players are familiar with today.

It was simply a tiny little prototype built in the Pico-8 fantasy console, featuring wall blocks made of pixels, a dash action, and a climb mechanism that did not resemble what it would become.

Nevertheless, the game still felt enjoyable to play, even in its minimal state. And it wasn’t a coincidence. Both the developers, Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry, approached that early build as if they were lab experimenters.

They simply adjusted the numbers, in game physics, and movement, and discarded anything not fitting into their vision of the game.

Eventually, they helped that weekend game jam project blossom into one of the most awarded indie game projects of the decade.

For upcoming video game designers, Celeste is essentially an instructional manual on how to develop an idea, whether from scratch or based on existing source material, into a game that is challenging, fair, and emotionally impactful.

Phase 1: Establishing Core Movement

The earliest Pico-8 version of Celeste had three moves:

• Jump (with height and arc).
• Dash (with a quick burst in any 8 directions).
• Climb (with stamina that requires decision-making).

In typical game jams, mechanics get added quickly, often with little to no fine-tuning. In this case, Maddy and Noel spent most of their time honing in on the feel of these three actions.

They modified variables, such as:

• Dash duration, distance, and cooldown time.
• Jump height, gravity scale, and horizontal acceleration.
• Climb speed and stamina drain.

Every change made was playtested in real-time. If a jump felt “floaty,” they added gravity. If their climbing felt sluggish, they increased acceleration but reduced stamina to maintain the challenge.

Lesson: Before you breathe life into levels, enemies, or a three-hour story, solidify your core actions. Your core actions are the foundation on which all other design choices rely.

Phase 2: Designing for the Player’s Abilities

Now that the moveset had been decided, the team began thinking about designing levels that would test those abilities in different ways.

While the design started methodically to explain the basic movement in the game to players, it focused on implied teaching, rather than explicit teaching.

• The first room showed jumping gaps.
• The second room communicated that you could dash across the gaps to reach a further platform.
• The next room communicated that you would have to dash and climb a wall.

There were no text tutorials; instead, it was all about using the environment to help players learn through safe experimentation.

They were able to fail early on without consequence, and as a result, there was no challenge or frustration when it came time to show their competence.

This “teach through design” ideation ultimately informed much of the thinking behind the rest of the level design. Every new mechanic being introduced, such as the springboard or wind, was first firmly established in the game before being tested in a more challenging experience.

Lesson: A good level design will implicitly teach the move set or ability that remains; it teaches you how the tool works before you are assessed on your ability to control it.

Phase 3: Iteration and Precision Tuning

Once the game mechanics were outlined and the learning path established, the developers entered a lengthy phase of iteration. The developers focused on two key points: responsiveness and fairness.

• Responsiveness: Inputs had to be responsive enough so that if a player pressed jump a fraction of a frame late, the game would add a slight input buffer on the jump to ensure registration.
• Fairness: Every death of a player should be associated with the player’s actions. This meant you could not make it seem the game was punishing you. The developers even adjusted hit boxes so that players wouldn’t die and appear as if they had cleared a spike.

Essentially, the entire team was playing their builds every day during this development, making microscopic adjustments to collision boxes, ledge grab timing, dash cancel windows, and so on.

Lesson: Small adjustments to numerical values can have significant ramifications for the player’s sense of fairness and enjoyment.

Phase 4: Integrating the Emotional Arc

Celest is not a game about platforming; it requires climbing a mountain, while simultaneously dealing with self-doubt. They only added narrative to the game once the mechanics base was solid.

The timing was extremely important. Because they had already created the pacing of the game by the time they had scaffolded in narrative elements, it also made it easy to place story beats at natural break points between levels, and also keep it brief enough that the dialogues would not slow the momentum of the game.

The theme of persistence tied beautifully with the mechanics; it was expected that you die often, and equally expected to learn that with every new safe respawn, you can forget and retry. So this meant the story and gameplay were in synch.

Lesson: If the themes of the game and mechanics are aligned, the entire experience feels more unified to the players.

Phase 5: Think Accessibility with Integrity

As the game was nearing completion, the team introduced an Assist Mode, which included a list of optional settings, such as infinite stamina, slower game speed, and extra dashes.

The goal was never to make the game easier for anyone, but to make the game possible for more players.

Choice is an important part. Players had the freedom to mix and match using these settings, while keeping the core game completely intact for players who wanted to play it as intended and experience the challenge.

The move was positively received by critics as well as players because it broadened the audience for our project while remaining true to the core concept of its original design.

Lesson: Accessibility features are not just an opportunity for goodwill; they can and should be applied to address the original challenge and ideal to increase player engagement.

Phase 6: Post-Launch Insights

When Celeste launched in 2018, it quickly became known for its “just one more try” gameplay loop. But that loop was the result of thousands of micro-decisions during development:

• Early focus on movement feel.
• Level design that teaches without words.
• Iteration for responsiveness and fairness.
• Thematic alignment between story and gameplay.
• Thoughtful accessibility options.

For players, these decisions are invisible; they just feel right. For aspiring designers, understanding them is the difference between a game that’s playable and one that’s unforgettable.

Insights For Future Game Designers

• Start small and iterate hard. A jump can take days to perfect.
• Teach through play. Use your environments to showcase the mechanics first before testing competence with them.
• Tweak for fairness. Your players should feel responsible for their mistakes – not cheated by the game.
• Align theme and mechanics. Allow the gameplay to reflect the essence of the story.
• Include accessibility early if possible. Design for all players, not just the most competent ones.

Final Thoughts

The mountain Celeste climbed, from a 4-day Pico-8 prototype to an indie smash hit, was not a straight line.

It was developed through failed attempts and iterations—the same process every designer must go through, whether it is their own creative expression or the pursuit of a game development certificate.

The mountain is different for everyone, but the lesson remains the same: take a step, then take another. Adjust. Try again. And keep climbing until the game is worth playing.

Ready to Build Your Own Climb?

At MAGES Institute, you don’t just learn game design,  you create it, test it, and watch it breathe. Our hands-on Game Development Learning experience, combined with expert-led lessons and applied projects, will hone your skills and create a playable portfolio that demonstrates the same.

It is the same hands-on, iteration process that most professional game designers go through, which is exactly what makes MAGES different.