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Celeste Golden Strawberries

If you've talked to me at all over the past three months, you know that I've fallen in love with a game called Celeste. It's a platformer about climbing a mountain. The game has beautiful art, amazing music, and the best depiction of mental health issues I've ever seen in popular media. It's also an incredibly difficult game, which makes me really happy.

One of the hardest challenges in Celeste comes after you have completed the first 16 (of 24) levels, and that is the golden strawberry. Every level gains a golden strawberry at the beginning of the level, and in order to get it, you have to take it to the end of the level without dying. There are 175 normal strawberries in the game, and 24 golden strawberries from deathless runs. There is also one final super secret golden strawberry, for a total of 200 strawberries. I've taken it upon myself to collect every last one of these strawberries to achieve that glorious 200.

Just over a week later, 6-b has been conquered! Good to know that I don't have to take seven years between every remaining strawberry.

The 6-b golden strawberry has been gotten!

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— Starlight (@hatkirby.bsky.social) April 30, 2025 at 6:08 PM

The interesting thing about 6-b is that the first checkpoint was probably the hardest for me. I am not good with the feather mechanic and rooms 2-4 make big use of it. I got pretty consistent at room 2, and room 4 was alright, but room 3 felt like a coin toss every time. At least I started doing a wave dash in order to skip the first bumper in that room. Speaking of which; the bumpers are pretty rough too. Rooms 5 and 6 were frequent run killers.

The second checkpoint is the fall, and while there are a few rooms that are a bit sticky, most of them are okay. The real struggle with this checkpoint is that for some reason, in this level I've consistently been getting a lag spike at around 3:30 on the in-game timer. This often lined up with me being midway through the second-last room in the second checkpoint, which is the room that requires the most precision out of the entire level. Getting the lag spike killed me every time. Fortunately, as I got better at the level, I started doing it faster, and I'd get to the bottom of that room with plenty of time to spare. I'd then just jump around down there until I saw the lag spike hit, and then continue on to the rest of the level.

And then the thing is that the following two checkpoints were really not that bad! They're shorter than the first two (5 rooms each, not counting the cassette blocks room). Each only had one room that was particularly spooky to me; unfortunately, one of them was the very last room before the cassette blocks and I died in it twice. Luckily, the first time I made it past that point, I beat the level!

This kind of took a toll on my body. My arms and body hurt, and my eyes are hazy. I'll probably have to take a bit of a break. I'm excited about 7-b but maybe not right now.