Indie developer Ruben Pecellin has a new platforming game in the works for mobile called Mountain Climber: Frozen Dream, and it caught my attention for a couple of reasons when it was posted to our forums earlier this month. For one, it’s advertised as a one-handed platformer, and I am all about those. I love regular platformers of course and am even a fan of virtual buttons, but it’s nice to have a game like Leap Day or Super Mario Run that you can whip out and play with one hand when you have a few free moments. Mountain Climber hopes to join that particular club and I’m all for it. The other thing that caught my attention when I saw this game was just how much it resembled indie darling Celeste, which I’m currently enjoying on my Nintendo Switch. From the pixel art and animation style to the general theme and tone of the game, Mountain Climber sure does look an awful lot like a mobile take on Celeste. Check out the trailer for yourself.
This comes at kind of an interesting time because our Game of the Week last week Wonder Blade has drawn some criticism from a handful of folks for looking a little too much like The Behemoth’s 2008 game Castle Crashers. I absolutely see what people are saying as there are lots of similarities, but it’s also completely evident that Wonder Blade is an original work. I feel similarly about Mountain Climber. You wouldn’t think someone ripped the code from Celeste and uploaded it for mobile or anything, but it’s very hard to not think “CELESTE!" every time you look at it. I figure that a person’s comfort level with this sort of thing comes down to that individual, and considering neither Castle Crashers or Celeste are on mobile I say bring it on, even in these cases where the inspiration from those existing titles is particularly heavy. Plus, in each scenario the mobile developers are adding their own spin on things and really optimizing the games for mobile play. It’s an interesting situation for sure!
At any rate, if you’re liking the look of Mountain Climber you can follow along with its progress in our forums and a beta testing period should be kicking off in the near future with a full release tentatively planned for next month.
Wonder Blade was not just a little like Castle Crashers. The levels are almost perfect replicas. Not much originality in it at all.
It's not just the pixel art/animation style and theme of the game. It looks like a lot of mechanics have been lifted as well.
> You wouldn’t think someone ripped the code from Celeste and uploaded it for mobile or anything
It's funny you'd mention that, since the code for the original PICO-8 Celeste has been available online for three years now. Mountain Climber is so similar, my first thought was that the author could have easily referenced it.
I think that you don't have any idea about code develop. This game is one handed and the levels seems designed for this purpose, that changes everything.
In my opinion, looks like Celeste only on the theme.
I’m a professional software engineer. You’re vastly underestimating how much easier copying an existing game is than developing mechanics and IP from scratch.
Plus, Pecellin‘s last game was a blatant rip-off of Trauma Center. Several of the reviews even complain that it contains ripped assets. I’m not giving him the benefit of the doubt here.
I'm a game dev and I don't think you're a software engineer, just a furious fan of Celeste.
Okay?
https://github.com/jamesgecko
Sorry but I wouldn't be talking about this with any coworker. Also, I asked to developer about what engine or language he used, the game is made with unity in c# and pico-8 use lua. It's the same like I saw in wonder blade. People saying that devs stole code without any sense...
First, it’s not that hard to port code, dude.
Second, maybe you SHOULD talk about clones with people in the game industry, if that’s where you actually work, if you’re not actually Pecellin. It’s not like indies aren't chock-full of stories about how hard it is to make original games and how rip-offs hurt them.
Threes: http://asherv.com/threes/th...
Ridiculous Fishing: https://www.polygon.com/fea...
Triple Town: http://www.edery.org/2012/0...
Before it was a steal and now it's a port... You are saying serious things so I recommend you keep calm. Also I could to say you a lot of things but I say nothing. Do you know the only I said? what everybody else has seen. A game heavily inspired in Celeste but with different mechanics and levels like the article.
Plagiarism is indeed a very serious matter. That's why I'm bringing it up.
Why are you so insistent that it's wrong to ask if the author of a game very similar to Celeste used readily available Celeste source code?
You are the insistent. I would think the same as you if it was the same game or the same levels but I don't see that.
Mechanically it sounds like he’s at least changing things up to adapt it to mobile controls, and designing the levels around that.
...but aesthetically from the level art assets it looks like he’s just straight up ripping off Celeste. He’s aping enough of the game that he could stand to at least change up the graphics more.
Agreed. At the moment it's so blatantly a ripoff that I'm surprised it hasn't been directly addressed by TA. When I saw a gameplay clip I got really excited because I thought it was something new from the Celeste devs or some sort of spinoff title.
Finally I can play as white Theo!
Games cool but damn do i have to hear that sound every time he jumps..