Celestial Resort (Good Karma Mix) – Christa Lee – Celeste B-Sides

Difficulties Easy Normal Hard Expert Expert+
656 26
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An experimental map that goes above and beyond in certain aspects to create a unique experience.

For the purpose of full disclosure, I did playtest this map while it was in development. However, I'm super glad that I did, as I likely would have missed this map otherwise, and it really is a gem, albeit one that could use a bit more polish. I have played other maps from this mapper before, and while they've always been solid, high-quality maps, this one really pushed the bar to the next level. That said, it does have some issues with its parity that would cause issues for wrist players.

A lot of the patterns in this map really want to make you move, whether it's from the well-utilised obstacles, or the horizontal and diagonal notes that try to force your body to lean. For the most part, I thought it worked extremely well, and any sort of inverted parity winds itself out as you straighten up.

However, there are a couple parts in which I found the map expected you to hold your position just a bit too long, and when I didn't, the inverted forehand/backhand on some of the horizontals felt very uncomfortable. You can see an example of this at 1:46, which does have parity issues with the reds, and the blue verticals don't really prompt you to physically adjust yourself to make these hits feels more natural. The expert+ definitely demands more of this physical movement from you, but as a consequence, it also has a few more of these hits that can play as uncomfortable. The expert+ does just have genuine triangles, like at 3:13 and other similar patterns, that I felt had enough time to be alright for an arm player, but would likely be very detrimental for wrist players, which is a shame.

I do believe this maps succeeds in its use of walls and bombs. I would love to see more mappers embrace bombs as an aspect of the game that have a lot of potential, even though they are often overlooked, or abused by new mappers. In this map, Wolfb really worked to use the bombs to help force precision in a way that felt fair, while also highlighting the music and adding more emphasis to the peaks of the song. The walls work in a similar fashion, acting both as a backdrop to highlight certain sounds, and forcing movement out of the player in less note-dense sections.

Overall, I do really enjoy this map as an arm player that appreciates high-movement maps, but I can also recognise the faults a wrist player would likely have with it. As such, it feels appropriate to dock points on flow and pattern quality. While I would encourage the mapper to take into account the diversity of grips and playstyles in the future, especially for expert+ difficulties which are predominately played by wrist players, I also hope they continue to push themselves and the community's expectations and create more of these unique experiences. Well done, Wolfb!


Mapper: Wolfb

Another Celeste B-Sides track, this one’s pretty funky. Dodge walls and some light sprinkling of bombs along with a full spread makes for a pretty varied map, I hope!

Thanks to the testplayers Pyrowarfare and Escapee for testing this one.

See it played here:

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Comments (1)
  1. Slayer3239 says:

    Hello, I don’t know if you will respond to this but im trying to play this song, but its not giving me the option to load up the song. Like i hear the preview, but that just it. i can select the difficulty or start it up.

    Need help. Thank you.

    Beat Saber 1.19.0

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