Utilizing Celeste’s Ahorn modding suite, I created a relatively difficult chapter that revolves around using some intermediate techniques that are taught to the player in the later stages of the game. Celeste is purely a singleplayer game, so this chapter is focused on more story-like elements alongside individual player challenges.
This level will assume a natural progression of the base game, with the player having completed both the game’s main story, as well as most of the B-sides. The idea behind this level is to be a sort-of continuation of the story after Madeline has completed Chapter 8, where she exits the core cave, only to find another, more compelling cave system that feels different in some way.
With the pulling sensation coming from the cave, Madeline finds herself going further in and, higher than she’s ever gone before. What sort of cave is this, anyway? It seems as if the cave is leading to the top of the mountain again, but if it was, shouldn’t she already have reached the summit? As the player keeps jumping and dashing through the cave, the environment starts to rapidly heat and cool, much like the Core of the mountain, and the pull of the cave seems to get even stronger. Once the player reaches the end, after one final challenge similar in challenge but about half the length of the final level in the game’s Farewell DLC, the source of energy is finally revealed.
Working with these design papers, I was able to build and test a level with roughly 50 different screens and platforming challenges.
Since this set of levels was designed around being a natural progression to the game's basic story, the level also uses primarily vanilla game mechanics. Along with re-introducing previously taught game mechanics, it also introduces a mechanic not typically taught in the base game known as the "neutral jump." With this new mechanic, the originally taught mechanics also get integrated with this new system to provide a natural progression of challenges that should feel difficult, but not punishing.
With the natural progression of level design, the initial paper map only slightly resembles the current iteration, in overall critical path alone. Along with general modifications to the layout, playtests provided insight on some puzzles that felt simpler than some of those that preceded it, causing me to either shift the rooms, or make adjustments to the room's difficulty curve.
The process of creating this level took quite a while with one person, since it involved not only learning the tools to create the level, but also required a lot of patience in building out a level that was roughly the size of Celeste Chapter 9.
