Celeste's 9th chapter was inspired by Super Mario World

Celeste's 9th Chapter, entitled Farewell, adds in a considerable amount of content, both in terms of gameplay and story. In a new dev blog for the DLC, developer Matt Thorson reveals how one of Mario's adventures helped inspired the creation of Celeste's new content.

Chapter 9 wasn’t supposed to have any explicit story. The original plan was to make just 30-50 new screens of super-difficult junk that remixed all the main game’s objects in interesting new combinations. A big inspiration, which stayed with us the whole way through, was the Special Zone from Super Mario World. I designed a lot of levels in this style. Most of them ended up comprising one section of Farewell, after Madeline catches the bird for the first time (they’re easy to spot). The new cassette block rooms were originally going to mark the end of the chapter. I thought of it as another B-Side that could slot in after the C-Sides.