The Bygones Collective

Catlog entry: "Celeste OST" (and its expansions), by Lena Raine

Thoughts

Celeste is an immensely popular 2D platformer from 2017. It's a charming and memorable experience that doesn't overstay its welcome at a base level while also offering plenty of extra challenges and milestones for those who wish to test their limits in its world. Most of all, it's just so dang wholesome. It's a cute story with endearing characters and, most importantly for the purpose of this post, a fantastic soundtrack by Lena Raine.

The music stands on its own and is well crafted, with each soundtrack representing well the levels in which they are presented. One can almost hear the hustle and bustle of the city in First Steps, feel the pillowy clouds underfoot in Golden, and the vast yearning emptiness throughout the entirety of the impressive 8-minute span of the Farewell expansion's titular track.

All of that said, I want to focus the rest of this post on the idea of music as a focus aid. I think music deserves to be listened to with intention (including this soundtrack, of course), but the nature of video game OSTs, especially in arcade-adjacent games such as Celeste, is that you're going to be hearing a lot of these tracks many times over, to the point of likely being able to hum along with any given level's track by heart by the time you're through with the level. In this fashion, Raine's OST for this game excels greatly. The music is complex enough that it's enjoyable to listen to, while not being so demanding of one's attention that one cannot focus on both the music and the game. And so much of it is so catchy and cute that you can't help but swell with nostalgia hearing parts of the OST that are particularly memorable.

Tangential

I used to call this section "Similar acts," but I so frequently went off on tangents about how, well, the groups I want to discuss here don't quite line up with the original entry's vibe, but here's my reasoning for it, and so on and so forth. When the exception happens so much that it becomes the rule, something has to change. Thus, this is the tangential section henceforth.

With that in mind, none of these acts sound much anything like this OST, but they are all included as a part of my "Focus" soundtrack on Spotify. Of course, such a soundtrack will almost certainly not gel with you in the same way unless you've played the same exact games as me, and can hear the included soundtracks without thinking too much about them at this point, but I figure it worth sharing for posterity either way. Some of the other included game OSTS in the playlist are as follows:

#catalog #music