[…] about some Celeste game-feel tricks. I don’t think that we invented any of these techniques, but they are important parts of the moment-to-moment experience of Celeste.
- Coyote Time
- Jump Buffering
- Halved-Gravity Jump Peak
- Jump Corner Correction
- Dash Corner Correction
- Semi-Solid Popping
- Lift Momentum Storage
- Wide Wall-Jump Window
- Even Wider Super Wall-Jump Window
- Stamina Refunds
You might have noticed a pattern! All are centered around widening timing or positioning windows, so that everything is fudged a tiny bit in the player’s favor. I think that this is a big reason why Celeste can feel kind even though it’s very difficult — it wants you to succeed.
Jump buffering is the one I’d tell every new dev to add first. It costs almost nothing and players never notice it, they just stop feeling like the game ate their button press. Same idea works outside platformers. In a tick-based game, queueing the last click for the next tick fixes a lot of “I clicked it, why didn’t it work” complaints.