Celeste Advanced Movement: From B-Sides to Beyond
Celeste teaches you to jump, dash and climb, then quietly ships one of the deepest movement systems ever put in a platformer and never mentions it again. The B-Sides start assuming knowledge the game never taught; Farewell flat-out requires it. This guide covers the core advanced techniques in rough order of difficulty, with the inputs spelled out and — more importantly — the why behind each one. All of this is doable on a standard controller by a normal human. Slowly at first. That's the Celeste way.
First, understand the two rules everything builds on
Rule one: dashes restore on the ground. Touching solid ground, even for a frame, refills your dash. Rule two: momentum is preserved unless something removes it. Nearly every technique below is a scheme for converting a dash into lasting horizontal speed, then protecting that speed. Once you see the system that way, advanced Celeste stops being a trick list and starts being physics.
Extended dash jumps (the gateway)
Jumping during a dash keeps the dash's horizontal speed. A dash jump — dash horizontally, then jump before the dash ends — carries you farther than either input alone. This one the game does sort of teach. What it doesn't teach: the jump also refreshes your control mid-air, letting you steer a dash that would otherwise lock your trajectory. Practice on any flat stretch until it's automatic; every technique below starts from this seed.
The wavedash
The foundational advanced tech. Input: while airborne and close to the ground, dash diagonally down-forward, and jump the instant you touch the ground. The diagonal dash slams you into the floor, the landing converts the dash's speed into ground speed and refills your dash, and the immediate jump preserves the speed — leaving you flying forward with your dash back. That last clause is the whole point: a wavedash is free speed that doesn't spend your resource. The timing window on the jump is forgiving once you internalize the rhythm — dash-land-jump, almost a drumbeat.
The hyperdash (hyper)
The wavedash's grounded sibling: standing on the ground, dash diagonally down-forward and jump during the dash. You get a long, low, extremely fast jump — less height than a wavedash, more speed. Hypers are the backbone of fast Farewell play and most speedrun routing. A crouch-jump variant from a standstill makes it consistent: hold down, dash forward, jump. Low ceilings that block normal jumps often permit hypers, which is exactly why level designers place them where they do.
Extended hypers and ultras
Two upgrades once hypers are comfortable. An extended hyper: perform a hyper, and during the flight, dash down-diagonally into the ground again and jump on contact — chaining the speed of both. An ultra (the community's name for the diagonal-dash landing boost): landing during a downward-diagonal dash multiplies your horizontal speed. Chained ultras are how top players cross entire screens in seconds. These are genuinely hard and genuinely optional — but even knowing they exist changes how you read the game's geometry.
Neutral jumps (wall tech)
Wall kicks normally push you away from the wall, which is fatal when you need to climb a single wall with no stamina. A neutral jump: let go of the directional input entirely, then jump off the wall — Madeline hops nearly straight up, and you regrab above. Costs no stamina. Chained neutral jumps climb any wall indefinitely, which turns several "impossible" B-Side screens into stamina puzzles with a known answer.
Spike jumps and the five-frame grace
Celeste's spikes only kill you if you're moving into them. Moving parallel to — or away from — a spiked surface is safe, which enables the alarming-looking tech of jumping off the base pixels of spike walls. Combine with the game's generous coyote time (you can jump for a few frames after leaving a ledge) and buffered inputs (inputs pressed slightly early still count), and you start to see the invisible kindness engineered into a famously hard game. The chunky, readable pixel art is part of the same design: you can only demand precision when the player can see everything.
How to actually practice
- One technique at a time. Pick the wavedash. Spend fifteen minutes on a safe screen. Stop before frustration compounds.
- Use Chapter 1 or the very first screens of any chapter — flat, safe, no pressure.
- Rebind if needed. Many players put dash on a shoulder button so jump and dash can be pressed near-simultaneously with different fingers.
- Assist Mode is a practice tool. Slowing the game to 80% while learning input rhythm is legitimate. The rhythm transfers when you speed back up.
- Watch your failures. Wavedash not working is almost always one of two errors: dashing too high above the ground, or jumping late. Diagnose, don't grind blindly.
Why bother
Because Celeste's difficulty is a staircase, not a wall — and these techniques are the handrail the game hides in plain sight. The moment a wavedash comes out under pressure in a B-Side, the game transforms: screens stop being obstacle courses and become instruments. It's the same trajectory Silksong asks of you (our survival guide covers that game's version of this journey) — mastery as the actual content. Celeste just happens to be the kindest teacher of the harshest curriculum in the genre.