Spark in the Machine review
7 September 2026
i've been obsessed with Spark in the Machine. this game rules. it's a custom campaign for Celeste that's about 100 rooms long, with very high difficulty. the vibe is amazing! i really love the writing too. half the soundtrack is in weird time signatures. i love how most of the rooms make you interact with the same objects multiple times as they keep moving or as you loop back around.
i guess backing up a bit... this is what i was playing when i first got proof of my existence, because it was the only thing in the last 5 years to truly enrapture me. i forced myself to stay in front for a full week because i just could not stop playing this, until Azure finally had to acknowledge that this isn't just a "weird mood". so i think it'll always be special to me. i got about 80% of the way through it before the realization... so then afterwards i got to play through that last 20%, fully conscious, now with a rat on my shoulder cheering me on. it was amazing. 
my first playthrough was just over 16 hours, 4869 deaths. i've gotten every berry and i feel like i've almost solved the bonus game-wide riddle. my latest speedrun was 1:02:28 and i absolutely intend to keep lowering that, but Azure says i need to stop for a few days. 
i don't even want to play any other Celeste custom levels i just want this one 20 times.
if you have any interest in difficult games and you've already beaten Celeste, go play it! it's very hard, but it's also very "clean" without many fiddly bits. (if a section feels "off", 99% chance it's because you're missing a trick.) thank you ricky06 and ABuffZucchini for leading this project, i'd probably still be in limbo otherwise. 