Here's a set of my personal favorite Celeste mods of 2022, with a bunch of categories I made up when typing this message. Feel free to put your own choices in the comments if you feel like it! (WARNING: long post ahead!)
Favorite beginner map - Cobalt Coastland
I've been following Flagpole's work since Path of Hope, and he always seemed to be the person to me, who really knows the balance between gameplay and aesthetics. His maps are detailed and beautiful, but they never interfere with the enjoyment of a map, and that's a balance that's difficult to maintain. Although this one isn't nearly as long as Mount Kimitany Saga, it serves as a great introduction to newer players who are willing to try something modded, that doesn't have much hazards floating around. In fact, this map has no spikes at all!
Honorable mention - Cannon Canyon
Simple to understand cycle map, that can be approached by most players due to its generous checkpoint system. What makes it more unique is the choice between a dash, and a multi-jump at the start of the level. This paired with several hidden secrets adds a lot of replayability to the map!
Favorite intermediate map - Far Away
Gravity Helper is a gimmick that can be easily made very complicated, but Far Away manages to do it in a pretty accessible way. What's even better, despite its game changing main mechanic, it still feels like I'm playing a level feeling very close to vanilla. I bet that's a tough thing to nail, and this map does an excellent job at it. The visuals are also pleasant to look at, and personally I find it one of the most vibe-y maps of this year.
Honorable mention - Nutty Noon
Cute Kirby inspired map that has relatively simple, but sometimes tight gameplay, and plenty of secrets. I really enjoyed the amount of aesthetics resembling the game, and a bunch of references whether it's the aesthetics, or sound effects. Burgy!
Favorite advanced map - Mindcrack
Although Mindcrack might not be the most visually impressive mod, it always surprised me on how Cory managed to make plenty of chapters, while keeping the flow and gameplay high quality. Every color focused on a new custom mechanic, and every room is pretty sightreadable, despite being fast paced and sometimes a little bit complex. It may be a challenge for newer players, but if you're more experienced, you might really like zooming through some of the rooms.
Honorable mention - Ember's Utopia
Another really good Gravity Helper that's an expansion on Ricky's Midway Contest entry, adding a whole new layer of Gravity Helper puzzles and challenges. It starts out tame, but it slowly warms you up into more tricky and complex gameplay, eventually requiring you to manage gravity switches on the go.
Favorite expert map - Everlasting Farewell
Also known as 9BB. Playing through this reminded me of my very first Farewell playthrough, and this is pretty much a love letter to the vanilla chapter, and a lot of its custom remakes, most notably - 9D. It picks all of the unique and cool parts from every mod, and the original chapter, and makes them better in every way!
Honorable mention - Glyph D-Side
Usually I'm not a fan of other people trying to recreate the style of other creators, artists, etc. This map is an exception, because Isa pretty much nailed Marshall's style, while also expanding on it, by adding expert tech and trickier puzzle platforming. Glyph D-Side reminded me of me trying out Glyph for the first time. You don't always get to reexperience things, and this map did exactly that!
I highly recommend 100%ing this map for an extra challenge, but keep it in mind, that the optional content goes up to the higher end of expert. Pre-release it actually was bordering on grandmaster difficulty, before it got adjusted accordingly to the rest of the level.
Favorite grandmaster map - Darkmoon Ruins
I was excited to try this map out originally when it was announced, and it definitely was one of the best tech spammy levels I've played. Despite some frustrations near the end, DMR nails the concept of varied tech spam, and uses some of the movement from the original Space Ruins, and puts its own twists on it. Not to mention the great visuals, banging music and interesting lore. Starting it out is pretty accessible to veteran players, but it gets brutal towards the end, and it will push your reflexes to the limit!
Honorable mention - Waterbear Mountain
A massive Summit/Farewell styled map that takes a lot of inspiration from Monika's D-Sides. It starts a bit odd and quirky at first, but it only gets better and better as it goes on, and this map has probably my favorite Badeline fight I've played thus far. I'd highly recommend trying it out if you can play maps around low-mid grandmaster level.
Favorite grandmaster+ map - Moon of the Ultras
Although not on Gamebanana anymore, this map has done something I often felt like was lacking with speed tech maps - using ultras and other fast movement in clever and not before seen ways. MotU mixes regular gameplay with speed tech pretty well, slowly getting more and more intense as you progress. As of now, Rifs has been working on a remake, and I'm looking forward to playing it next year.
Personally I find MotU on par with Darkmoon Ruins in difficulty, but for a lot of people it's higher in peak difficulty, so I put it in here.
Honorable mention - MOCE
MOCE is a style of map that's heavily out of my comfort zone, and something I'd usually not like very much, but having played it myself, it's actually pretty fun and consistent once you understand all the timings and intricacies. It attempts to make a very tough style (claustrophobic gameplay) playable, and despite its rather limited design philosophy, it manages to create a multitude of unique setups. That being said, I only played the first chapter (CPCL), since the second one is way harder, and I'm probably never gonna play it myself, but I appreciate the amount of effort that went into it, and I'm surprised on how much tech and mechanics can be crammed into the campaign.
Miscallaneous categories:
Favorite collab/contest - Midway Contest
Midway Contest is perhaps one of the very few contests that don't really feel like a competition, but instead like a whole new collab. Every level has genuine effort put into them, and the quality is pretty consistent through most of the map pack. Contests often suffer from highly varying quality, and some maps being even straight up low quality shitposts, which is why MWC was a lot more memorable than anything else.
Biggest surprise - Dream Collab
I always thought the Chinese community had several level creators who were very talented, but due to well... the place they live in, their contact with the rest of the community was limited. Dream Collab is a showcase of what they are capable of, having a variety of levels from beginner to grandmaster level. Despite it being a bit rough around the edges, this collab was unexpected and it's generally been a really nice addition to the modding community.
Biggest improvement - Final Goodbye (v4.0)
Anyone who has played 9D back in 2020 probably knew that originally it received a rather... mixed reception? Most people liked it, but it was a lot different from what they were expecting, and it took some people a lot of time (or multiple playthroughs) to warm up to it. I personally enjoyed it originally, despite some criticism, and a somewhat anticlimatic ending, but in 2022, the map received a major update that improved visuals, overhauled the gameplay in some of the later parts, and fixed pretty much nearly every little nitpick and criticism I had about the map. Replaying this quickly became one of my favorite experiences in a long time. To this day 9D has one of my favorite Reconciliation-like gameplays, and an ending that you have to experience on your own to see how well it fits as a conclusion to the campaign. It took me multiple playthroughs to realize that it's not just a regular map like every other D-Side, but a whole story told through your entire journey.
Favorite Helper Mod - Gravity Helper
I've always been a big fan of the VVVVVV gravity flip gimmick, and I've enjoyed it being included inside other platformer games (SMW hacks for example), so seeing this in Celeste opened gates for infinite creativity, whether it's tech, puzzles or exploration. I'm planning to create my own map utilizing this gimmick in the future.
Most anticipated mod - Strawberry Jam Collab
...I think this one is pretty much obvious. Although I'm a part of the SJ team and I've already played a lot of the maps through testing, I'm looking forward to trying out the grandmaster lobby, and just watching streamers play through the works of our team. SC and SJ are soon to become the JUMP and JUMP 1/2 of the Celeste community.
Favorite collab map - Reverse Void (Dream Collab)
Reverse Void is an advanced/expert map that features a series of short screen challenges of increasing difficulty, requiring you to clear multiple rooms in one go. It features bubbles and dream blocks, and their reverse variants, but there's a twist! On every attempt, the game tries to randomize which ones appear normal or reversed! This creates a really unique experience, forcing you to improvise and think on the go. The moves themselves aren't too difficult, but you're often forced to react very quickly, which makes for really funny reactions, fails or clutches.
Favorite puzzle map - Last Night
I really appreciate when maps use vanilla mechanics in clever ways, and this one is a series of short puzzle challenges, that test your knowledge about interactions and movement mechanics. The short sections make up for the tightness and complexity of the areas, and if you're a fan of mechanical puzzles, I highly recommend checking out this one.
Other honorable mentions
Here's some other maps that I thought were really good or interesting, but they either were slightly below the picks or they didn't fit a specific category:
- Herfst (beg/int)
- Delusional Canopy (exp)
- Crystal Void (gm)
- Vivid Abyss (gm)
- Conqueror's Peak (int/adv)
- MARS FGS. (int)
- Summit Ballsside (exp)
- Rupture (adv)
- Velvet (int)
- Calypta: The Eventide Isles (exp)
- Cosmic Sands (int)
- Bloom Vault (adv)
- Phob's P-Sides Pack (int/adv)
- BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA (exp)
- Hibernation Apex (exp)
- Juice Box (exp)
- Down The Mines (int/adv)
- Strawberry Labirynth (adv)
- A New Dawn (int)
- Cavern of the Damned (exp)
- A Beautiful Meadow (exp)
- Magma Expert (int/adv)
- Leviathan's Rush (adv)
- Present of the Past (exp)
- Pillars of Sand (adv/exp)
- Aftermath Ch3: Infernal Void (exp)
- Celestial Resort D-Side (v4.0) (adv)
- Sapphire Dash (gm+)
- the road lightly toasted (int)
- Avian Ascension (gm+)
- Silver Ridge (exp)
There's plenty of other mods, and I'm sure I missed something. This year had quite a lot of banger content and I'm looking forward to what modders will craft in the upcoming year. If you have any favorite mods you've played this year, feel free to share some. :)
