Is It Possible to Beat Celeste Without Climbing?

The sheer strength of will it took to explain that whole "hold Z the entire game" bit and not reference "half a button press" is impressive. My friend TJ will rest easy today.

"So how's your therapy sessions going?" "I'm scaling the mountain that is my anxiety but with my hands behind my back so it's canon." "Wha-"

What I love the most about this is that all the tactics he used was intentionally implemented by the developers. The wall jumping, wave dashing, jumping away from a spiked wall, wall jumping after a dash. All of these were intentional mechanics and it's amazing

this video was extremely well made - funny commentary, insane gameplay, great pacing and BANGER music. well done!!!

8:14 There’s actually a hard-coded reason for this working as it should: spikes only interact with you if you are moving in their direction. That’s how the one-way spikes in dream blocks in Ch 2 work, because you’re going the opposite direction. It’s also what makes Chapter 1’s dashless golden possible. EDIT: Another comment says that it’s if you’re facing their direction, which might be the case? I don’t know, all my knowledge is from watching speedrunners and not playing myself, so either could be true.

Madeline: Wavedashes Jumps infinitely off of walls Wall jumps off of spikes "I'm not much of a climber" :P

For anyone interested, the way that the trick at 8:13 works is that in Celeste, if you are moving in the same direction as a spike is pointing, it won't hurt you. You can see examples of this in some rooms where you go through platforms that have spikes on them. For this trick, because Madeline is moving the same way as the spikes, the player is able to perform a wallkick on the corner of the wall without being damaged

Oh my gosh chapter 2 was so beautifully in depth LOVED the beautiful flourishes of your voice as you discussed the complex maneuvering required to get around.

17:15 "a Z press is a Z press, you can't say it's only a half"

13:00 This room is technically possible grabless, but it's really REALLY dumb. Checking Euni's "Celeste 100% in 29 grabs" run around 31 mins will give you the solution if you so desire because it is way too dumb to explain in a yt comment. Always impressive to complete this game grabless, good job and entertaining vid!

(whispers)guys he's asleep, don't tell him there's a chapter 9

I love the fucking REVERSE EXTENDED HYPERJUMP jumpscares scattered across the video lol

Hey! I've kinda become the master of playing Celeste without the grab button over the last few years, and it's super cool to see a really well made video on the challenge! Congrats on completing the challenge, getting through the hard rooms in Ridge and the last room of 2500M is no small feat. If anyone's interested in seeing more of the game without climbing, I suggest searching "No Category Left Behind Celeste GDQ", which has a run of the B-Sides without climbing! (Spoiler: 4 of them are actually possible!) (Alternatively if you're reading this in the future I'm working on a 100% breakdown on my channel.) im gonna watch more of your vids now lol

Honestly really loved how you pointed out how silly rules lawyering in these challenges is. It’s all for fun! If the rules make a challenge MORE boring, they’re not doing their job!

6:44 idk why but the "and 3 to the side" made me laugh WAY harder than i should have

time for my celeste nerdyness to come into play 3:40 - this isn't exactly the first room where wavedashing or any speed tech is required since you can do a very late jump basically in mid air (called cayote jump) to wrap around and wall jump from the right side of the block, this gives enough distance to make it with an up right dash; the room right after however does need speed tech. 8:00 - small nitpick but thought i'd mention it anyway, with a reverse hyper (very similar to the tech you do for the skip in the temple) into an up dash you can avoid doing the spike wall jump altogether. 8:50 - this section actually has a few ways to be beaten unintentionally, one though requires a tech called "ceiling pop" which requires holding grab for basically a frame so that's out of the question; the other one would be to do a bunny hop, basically a hyperdash (which is a wavedash but executed from the ground) followed up by a tiny jump so you can land on the ground again and jump at the very edge so you get your dash back but maintain hyper/wavedash speed (make sure to hold down so Madeline crouches and doesn't bonk her head on this second jump) and after that an up right crouch dash into wall jump to end the room. 13:00 - although perhaps doable with some crazy movement including slowfalling (yes holding jump makes you fall ever so slightly slower), the closest i've gotten is the bottom right wall, using a bunny hop and up right crouch dash into wall jump to get around the coin block. 15:00 - you can use the little steps at the bottom of the screen to wall jump under the dash block, dash up right and quickly jump along with it, getting launched but you're high enough to hit the wall and not the tentacles; you can line this step wall jump up if you do a full neutral against the left side of the dash block. 18:25 - if you get really good at feather movement you can get the feather all the way across and up dash against the wall to get through; in case the other split path wasn't as friendly. 24:10 - although i never tried doing 5b grabless i decided to give it a shot myself, because the room you ended up getting stuck on isn't actually required, with certain skips it's possible to beat the key hub without collecting neither of the keys but for grabless you'd need at least one, and to my suprise it was a very unique challenge in a lot of places i didn't expect it to be, including the room where Theo says "uuh, yeah, this one's impossible" but was challenging for different reasons, the b-side of temple is doable grabless but will definitely get you thinking in plenty of spots. 26:10 - same as 5b, never tried and now working on it, first few screens proved to be quite the interesting challenge so far, i'll see how far i can go before i truly get stuck.

Still happy your TAS commented run got recommended to me. Your playlist rules!

Carrying Theo definitely isn't climbing. That'd be like saying someone used a gun in Half-Life 2 just because they pulled a trigger on their controller even though they were using the crowbar at the time. Besides, wall jumping & wall sliding are a lot more similar to climbing than carrying Theo is & those are obviously allowed.

16:00 awe that little happy dance

15:36 In this room, you can get into the bubble, go up-right, then as soon as you hit the ceiling, hold down to fast fall. By doing that, you can wall jump off the wall on the ground, then dash onto the RIGHT side of the dash block.