Celeste is a clear contender for best platformer of the year, and it'll probably end up being one of the most competitive speedrunning titles, too. While regular players will spend upwards of half-an-hour trying to master a single clear path through any given level, there's a lot more freedom for expression than is immediately obvious – perfect fodder for speedrunning.
Plenty of speedrunners are vying for first place at the moment – you can see the speedrun.com leaderboard here – but it still feels like the scene is in its infancy. The best run so far, by Magolor9000, manages an Any% run in 47 minutes and 33 seconds. You can see the run below, and while it's super impressive, there's clear room for improvement.
Given that the game's only been out a matter of days, one of the biggest challenges for early speedrunners is remembering the layout of some of the trickier levels – plenty needs to be memorised in the latter half of the game. As Magolor9000 points out on his YouTube page, this run is far from perfect in the opening minutes, but manages quite well in the second half.
Anyway, as someone who spent around 10 hours and upwards of 3000 deaths completing Celeste, this is clearly a feat. This record is likely to change as the days go by, but for now, it's a neat look at how especially adept players are tackling the game.
