User:Cukie Gherkin/Celeste: Farewell

Celeste: Farewell is the ninth and final chapter of Celeste, having been added as free downloadable content some time after the game's release.

Development
Celeste: Farewell was developed by Maddy Thorson and composed by Lena Raine, just as the previous content of Celeste was. Shortly after Celeste's release, Thorson and the others wanted to make new content for Celeste, but they took a long break before they began working on it. They initially planned for it to be a "quick update," but the scope continued to grow until it became what it was. Thorson felt that the story of Celeste was finished, with their goal for Farewell being to make it a "natural piece of the game" and for players to be excited by it while eventually being able to view it as indistinguishable from the rest of the game. Thorson discussed how Chapter 7 of Celeste touched upon how climbing the mountain was not the end of Madeline's problems; Farewell was an opportunity for the team to explore Madeline falling back into destructive patterns during hard times, and how her "newfound relationship with her "dark side" can help her dig herself out of that headspace." In addition to scope creep extending the game's development, the team was also busy with other things, such as the establishment of their new development studio, EXOK, immigrating the team to Canada, and focusing on their next game. While developing the chapter, Thorson wanted to explore the wavedash technique, an optional ability for Madeline. She discussed how the double dash used in Chapter 7 would make it too complicated to design challenges around the wavedash or teach players how to use it, so they opted to limit Madeline to only one dash for this chapter. Thorson wanted to incorporate it in some way, however, so they included the two-dash crystal. Another element, the blowfish, was inspired by modded levels that sought to make the Seeker from Chapter 5 not be able to attack the player, but still be able to be bounced off of. Another mechanic added was the Jellyfish Glider, which was added to explore the mechanics of grabbing and holding items, feeling it was barely explored. They considered including throwable bombs, but felt that the glider fit the outer space theme of Chapter 9, as well as fitting Celeste's platforming focus better.

Lena Raine spoke of the fears she had with composing the soundtrack for Farewell, worried that she would not be able to live up to the critical praise she received for her work on Celeste. She received the same degree of direction from Thorson and the rest of the team; the themes and arc of the level were discussed between them, but Raine was largely left to her own devices, where she pulled from her own experiences to compose the soundtrack. When composing the soundtrack, she included more live instrumentation than the base game's soundtrack in a desire to differentiate it and not have people be able to simply identify it as Celeste music; instead, she wanted to make people think that this is how Celeste could sound.