Don't send a strike team to do a mountain climber's job

Review of the level “Starlight Station”, in the Advanced Lounge of the Strawberry Jam mod for the game Celeste:

It’s good shit man

• Smallest possible tweak to single base game mechanic, introduced clearly and straightforwardly, but it opens up a surprisingly large space of new routing possibilities.
• Complex interactions, but very legible points of player leverage! And some occasional delightful surprises in sections that seem opaque at first read.
• Dangerous but inviting and fascinating environment, illustrated with careful restraint.
• Absolutely exhilarating quantities of YEET.
• Good-ass strawberry rooms that make you feel like a genius.
• Difficulty happens to be at a very precise sweet spot for my personal development as a player. It requires reverse hyper/wave/super tech (which I only just learnt) within long chains of precise actions, but it's well signposted and paces the setups a little more generously for the nastier moves.

This whole level is like being told a superb joke, and then they hand you the microphone right as you realize what the punchline has to be.

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anyway yeah I've been playing Strawberry Jam. And if you've played at least like, most of the B-sides of Celeste (and happen to have it on PC), then you really should check it out too. Even if you're "not hardcore!" The Beginner Lounge is mostly at an A-side difficulty level, and has some incredible sights, sounds, and ideas — the first three or four levels I played in it made me laugh out loud in delight.

And if you haven't played Celeste up through the B-sides, listen: it is the purest, most carefully polished, most functionally beautiful video game I know, wrapped in a heartfelt and true story that reveals more every time you think back on it. It can teach you new things about difficulty, new things about your perception of reality, and new things about yourself. It's a rare work of art, and some of the best time I've ever spent behind a controller.