I conquered the mountain in Celeste! It took me twelve and a half hours and I died 3,557 times.

The Celestial Resort was particularly good at killing me: seven hundred and thirty deaths. Given that I died there, you could say it was my last resort. You could say it seven hundred and thirty times.

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this game nearly as much as I did. On the surface, it doesn't sound particularly enjoyable to play a game where you're dying, on average, every thirteen seconds. But I genuinely had a great time. There were a handful of points where I started to lose patience, but I usually felt I was constantly improving and making progress, which made the game feel satisfying rather than frustrating.

(Also satisfying: going back and redoing the early levels once I'd beaten the game, just to see how much quicker I could do them now. I'd improved so much!)

Celeste is hard, but it's rarely unfair. It's not just hard as a 'screw you' to the player; it's presenting you with a challenge that can be overcome with determination. It earnestly believes in you and wants you to succeed.

And it's so charming! I really wasn't expecting that! I like that there's a boss battle where you're just trying really hard to give the boss a hug as she earnestly tries to murder you.

I'm a big fan of physical locations that reshape themselves to reflect the psyche of whoever passes through them. Much like Silent Hill, Celeste Mountain looks inside you and tests you by forcing you to confront yourself.

If you're curious about Celeste, it's included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. A few tips:

- If you're playing on a keyboard, you can remap the controls in the options. I'd recommend remapping jump/dash/grab so they're not all in a line, as the default setting means it's really hard to remember which is which. I put them on S, W and A respectively.

- If a level seems to demand impossibly perfect timing, there may be a simpler solution that you're missing. Often, when a level started to frustrate me, I ended up realising that my approach was wrong.

- Zipping through a level is satisfying when you get the hang of it! When you're struggling, though, calm down and slow down. At one point I threw myself unsuccessfully against one level for half an hour, took a break, slept, came back to the game, tried taking it slower and beat it within five minutes.


To my surprise and delight, there's a small but enthusiastic active Red Dwarf fanbase! I really thought the fandom would be a wasteland by now.

I've never confessed this anywhere online before, but I actually had a mild crush on Dave Lister when I was a kid. Apparently his unfortunate personal hygiene caused me no concern.

Anyway, I've located the exact moment in my rewatch that brought my crush on Lister straight back to me, and it's this scene from 'Holoship'. I'm slightly concerned.

(If you're wondering: the actor actually did do the ridiculous thing Lister does at the end of this clip, it was not scripted, he immediately regretted it.)