Greek mythology games that stay in the myth
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How Long to Beat Celeste
How long to beat Celeste — main story, all strawberries, and the brutal B-sides and C-sides breakdown.
Celeste's main story takes most players 6 to 10 hours. If you want everything — all strawberries, every B-side and C-side, and the golden strawberries — plan for 35 hours or more.
That spread tells you what Celeste actually is. The story is a tight, emotional climb that almost anyone can finish. The full completion is one of the hardest things a 2D platformer has ever asked of you.
How long to beat Celeste
| Goal | Time |
|---|---|
| Main story | 6–10 hours |
| Story + all strawberries | 16–25 hours |
| All B-sides and C-sides | 30–40 hours |
| 100% (incl. golden strawberries) | 40+ hours |
The main story is the consistent part. The numbers explode once you go after the optional content, because that content scales up in difficulty far past the base game.
What affects your playtime
A few things decide where you land:
- Assist mode. Celeste lets you slow the game down, add air dashes, or turn on invincibility, with no shame and no locked content. Players who use it can finish the story noticeably faster. The design choice is deliberate — the story should be reachable for everyone.
- The B-sides. Each chapter has a hidden cassette that unlocks a remixed, much harder version. These are where the time starts to balloon. A single B-side can take an hour or several depending on the chapter.
- The C-sides and golden strawberries. C-sides are short but vicious. Golden strawberries demand a deathless run of an entire chapter, which can mean dozens or hundreds of attempts. This is the true completionist wall.
- Raw platforming skill. Unlike many games, Celeste's clock is driven almost entirely by execution. Two players can take wildly different times on the same screen simply based on reflexes and pattern reading.
The big one is which content you decide to chase. The story and the 100% are almost two different games in length.
Is it worth the time?
Yes, on both ends. The story is one of the best-paced platformers made, and 6 to 10 hours of it is a complete experience you can be moved by and walk away from.
The honest caveat: the optional content is genuinely hard, and not in a casual way. The golden strawberries in particular are a test of patience that will frustrate most players. If precise, repetitive execution under pressure isn't fun for you, stop at the story and don't feel like you missed the point — you didn't.
How it compares to similar games
If you're sizing Celeste against the games it sits next to:
- Ori and the Will of the Wisps runs longer for a single playthrough — roughly 8 to 12 hours for the story — because it's a Metroidvania you explore rather than a screen-by-screen platformer.
- Hollow Knight is much longer to "beat," around 25 to 30 hours, with its own brutal optional content in the Pantheons and Path of Pain.
- Dead Cells lands around 12 to 15 hours for a first clear, with a long difficulty tail that, like Celeste's completion, is for a specific kind of player.
Celeste is the shortest of these to finish and arguably the hardest to fully complete.
If you play games all the way to the hard optional content, KUTO: The Lock of Time has that loop too. The difficulty spike is which Time Key pair you take into a run, not a B-side chapter. Wishlist it on Steam so you don't miss the launch.
Frequently asked questions
- How long does it take to beat Celeste?
- The main story takes most players 6–10 hours. Collecting all strawberries adds another 10–15 hours. Clearing all B-sides and C-sides — the game's hardest content — can push total time past 35 hours.
- How long are the B-sides in Celeste?
- Each B-side is a condensed, much harder remix of its chapter. A single B-side might take an hour for average players, longer for the harder ones. All 8 B-sides together add 8–20 hours depending on your skill.
- Is Celeste hard to 100%?
- The main game is approachable with the assist mode available. 100% completion — all strawberries, B-sides, C-sides, and golden strawberries — is genuinely one of the harder platformer completions available.
- How long does the Farewell chapter take in Celeste?
- Farewell (Chapter 9) is the longest single chapter in the game — most players spend 5–15 hours just on this chapter. It's harder than the B-sides and C-sides, and its golden strawberry is considered one of the hardest achievements in modern platformers.
- Does Celeste have an assist mode that changes the length?
- Yes. Assist mode lets you slow game speed, add extra stamina, and enable invincibility. With heavy assists, the main story can take 3–5 hours. The game frames this as accessibility — you complete the same story, just with more support.
- How long is Celeste compared to Hollow Knight?
- Much shorter for a main playthrough — Celeste runs 6–10 hours vs. Hollow Knight's 25–30. For full completion they get closer: Celeste 100% takes 35+ hours, Hollow Knight 112% takes 55–65 hours.
- What is the golden strawberry challenge in Celeste?
- Each chapter has one golden strawberry that requires completing the full chapter without dying once. They're optional but represent the game's hardest content. Collecting all of them typically takes 50–100+ hours.
- Is Celeste DLC included in the base game?
- Yes. Farewell (Chapter 9) was a free update included with the base game — there's no paid DLC. All the content that pushes playtime past 35 hours is part of the original purchase.
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