It’s hard not to love Celeste — a personal tale of overcoming hardship and mental anguish, the game is alright being noted as an indie darling and frontrunner for many of 2018’s Game of the Year headlines. In their effort to continually perfect the game and keep it fairly competitive in the right sections, developer Matt Makes Games has issued an update for PC (eventually coming to consoles) that will fix a speedrunning exploit, retconning the current standings and scores in the process.
News comes from Celeste‘s official dev blog, where the update — titled V1.2.1.0 — was fully detailed. Although most everything falls into the general bug and glitch fix category, the notable change is to the speedrunning exploit. According to the patch notes, the Chapter timer would pause during deaths, cutscenes, and in-game menus originally. The gaming community (in typical min-max gaming community fashion) used this feature to retry different stages of a Chapter. However, developer Matt Makes Games is a speedrun purist and wanted to remove that option from Celeste players’ toolbox:
The Chapter timer no longer pauses during deaths, cutscenes, and in-game menus. Previously it was possible to exploit the timer by retrying on some screen transitions, which we didn’t feel was a fun way to play.
Obviously, no good deed goes unpunished so this does have the obvious drawback: speedrun times for single-chapters will be cleared. However, the development team decided to make this change now “while the game is still early in its speedrun life.”
While the update is currently available for PC, console players shouldn’t feel too left out. According to one of the lead developers Noel Berry, console players can expect the update “soon”:
Celeste v1.2.1.0 is up on Steam, itch shortly, and Consoles soon.https://t.co/MulVxWU9YA
This version has a breaking change due to the IL "Chapter" timer changing, so Speedrun times in the Journal will be reset (no other save data will be affected).
— Noel Berry (@NoelFB) February 18, 2018
Celeste launched to wide approval from the gaming community at large, garnering strong critical reviews — especially from DualShockers. Although the game is still in early post-launch season, the game has sold best on Nintendo Switch according to developer Matt Thorson.
Celeste is available immediately for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.