Celeste, Germinal, & Videogame Plagiarism

[@alansmithee419]

At this point they should've just made a mod for Celeste.

[@thatspiderbyte]

Wow... i dont normally give much thought to claims of videogame plagiarism but this is so blatant lmao

[@ParrotDash]

Great video, very high quality and am happy to see someone talk about this topic and point this out

[@sileudies]

Oh hi parrot

[@zerver7987]

damn hi parrot didn't expect to see you here 😜

[@crystalgames7744]

Parrot Dash! 😃

[@abet6583]

Y'know, I usually don't care if a game takes "inspiration" or whatever, in fact I think it's fairly good to do so, I feel like the fact that you could remake this entire game within Celeste using mods with minimal effort outside coding the movement mechanics speaks for itself.

[@victorjohnson5646]

I agree with this. if you could remake any "inspired" game within the "inspiration" with mods and minimal effort. it is a ripoff

[@MagicianStevey]

I think this game would be good as a celeste mod. For how talented these people are and how fun this game would be to play, it would be fun to play this as a mod for Celeste, or a free fan game. This being it’s own game that probably isn’t free definitely isn’t the best seeing how similar it is to celeste. If this was a free fan game or mod to celeste I think it would get much more praise seeing how fun it probably would be to play.

[@Lieroid]

I feel like Germinal is to Celeste what Spark the Electric Jester or Freedom Planet is to Sonic the Hedgehog. They're games born from love for those properties, that borrow a lot of stuff from their sources of inspiration, but are honestly just trying to create more of that fun the creators had felt from the originals. It feels a bit reductive to me to say that that's a bad thing.

[@guse7688]

You probably watch YakkoCMN. I agree

[@mrsharpie7899]

2:23 Okay, hold on. Having 3 save files attacked on top of each other is almost ubiquitous, no matter what kind of game you're playing

[@MewPurPur]

@DarkCoreX yeah so? As a gamedev making a game with 3 savefiles, how else am I supposed to do it?

[@diamondpelel6291]

@@MewPurPur 3 fish-shaped boxes obviously

[@Kumlejo]

Yeah I stopped the video and came to comment the exact sale thing, guess we can’t have 3 save files

[@bluehairedemon]

Also the screen transitions are pretty common among a lot of games, but there are still a lot of direct ripoffs, like the dash cutscene

[@guse7688]

@DarkCoreX one of them is paper slips, the other is a contacts list. As the game is about cleaning from what I know, and most cleaning jobs are called on by a phone, that makes the contact list a pretty clever choice for a save file. ALSO THEY ARE SQUARES!!! CAN GAMES NOT USE SQUARES NOW!?!? I'm sorry, but this genuinely made me mad, you can't call squares a form of plagerism.

[@zochi_6224]

I think this is more of a project out of passion for celeste. Because it clearly has a lot of effort and attention to detail behind it, and it had potential. But in the end it never had anything to separate it from celeste. It had the skill, it had the care, it just didn’t have a direction.

[@guse7688]

It is still in a demo, give it time to grow. Also the movement is actually quite different, it's more akin to the water nozzle mechanic from super mario sunshine which they mentioned themselves.

[@fellthekerl]

thanks for letting me know to buy this game

[@Mswordx23]

I mean Bug Fables takes a trillion things from Paper Mario but people are fine with that. Though I think the difference is Bug Fables is generally understood to be a Paper Mario fan game in everything but name while this game is just said to be Celeste-"inspired".

[@guse7688]

They have said it's heavily inspired I believe.

[@amj.composer]

Maybe I'm too biased, but idrk. But Celeste's art just looks SO much more satisfying and pleasing to the eyes. [Edit]: LMAO 4:51, I've tried this game. It was SO bad. I could write a book about all poor writing choices and gameplay tomfoolery they did in this.

[@astroorbis]

As a (wannabe, 1:03:56 pb) Celeste speedrunner: This is basically just "copy my homework but change it up a bit" except EXOK hasn't signed off on it I do like some parts of the tilesets though, even though the dash mechanic looks confusing And at that point, just mod Celeste with Everest Also, the dash blocks have the same dot inside of it as the dash blocks in ch5 :3

[@kaloyanbarkachev9766]

When I take inspiration from something I really like, sometimes I find myself almost copying it, not because I wanted to do that, but because I just really like that thing. What I do when I find myself in such a situation is to try and rethink what I have done. I want the thing I'm inspired by to be visible, but I also don't want it to look like a copy. These developers could accidentally have made a clone of Celeste in there atempt to create something they think is good, but if that is the case and they didn't realised the mistake they have made I can only feel sorry for them.

[@autumn4442]

Even the background movement of the power lines looks similar

[@sandwich2473]

It's weird seeing this on a platform that isn't the mobile marketplace :/

[@amaryllis0]

"Plagiarism" is a pejorative. There's nothing wrong with pastiche. The only people they are hurting is themselves by not going far enough to give their game a unique identity and feeling.

[@Honly]

Very nice video! Editing is incredibly clean

[@marbyyy7810]

this rocked, u shoudl do more things like it ! good length too c:

[@ashleylust1271]

Imma be honest I think they should market this as a Fangame

[@Rickfernello]

Very good video! I'm a big Celeste fan, and I've never heard of Germinal before. But this game got me intrigued. Is it really just a rip off? It appears to be a bit polished, as opposed to "Frozen Dream". But a few things really got me irked, like the growing hazards that look like dust bunnies, similar room designs, the death animation and level transition. As for the pixel art and movement arc, I find it hard to blame the devs for it. It looks and feels good...

[@emmas1366]

yeah same. these plagiarism/clone videos often point to basic things like save mechanics or some kind of dash/collectable as copying when they tend to be staples of the genre, I will say this particular instance seems especially yikes though. The dust bunnies were definitely the most objectionable to me, they look and work almost exactly the same for no apparent reason. I'm a bit curious about this game now, I wonder if I'll see it pop up elsewhere

[@FearghalMaybeSpyFromTf2]

woah, your the guy who did the thing

[@ireallydontknowifiamhonest]

Why do I feel like they just took the Celeste C# Project Debug File, Ran it through ILspy, copied every single thing from it (might not have 100% copied it but there probably exists code references) made obvious changes to everything visually that is not affected by a Shader and that's it, cause I swear that engine feels exactly the same as that of Celeste, Visually by all the Shaders, and even by the Physics, it would be interesting to go through the demo files of this game to see how much they actually copied or referenced, cause I am damn sure it's written in C# as well

[@idadeerz]

You wouldn't be the first to suggest they just ripped and modified assets from Celeste - i just don't have the technical knowledge to investigate any of that myself or to really make such a claim. The similarities are extremely striking though, and i do wonder if they actually put in the effort of replicating everything manually or if it was somehow stolen from Celeste, especially with stuff like the screen transitions which are slightly different (so i don't know whether it's custom or if it's ripped somehow) but they still move at pretty much the exact same speed/timing for instance.

[@ireallydontknowifiamhonest]

@@idadeerz so, downloaded the demo and went through some parts of the code, there isn't direct copying of stuff but it does have heavy code references to that of Celeste, haven't went through the entire code but this seems highly suspicious

[@ericzhan3454]

@@idadeerz The death animation appears to use the exact same sprite as the dust bunnies, eyes and all. I wouldn't put it past them.

[@queenzigzag]

usually i argue in the defence of cases like this, since some of my favorite games are just meant to be new instalments in ignored franchises (like bloodstained and BRC) but... yeah, this is a bit much. people are free to take as much inspiration from anywhere they want, but theres gotta be some iteration and evolution. this looks so similar i wouldnt be surprised if they used the same source code. the game seems enjoyable and well-made, i just with it did more to differentiate itself i think its another thing with 'spiritual successor' type games that the more recent their inspiration is, its seen as less of inspiration and more as a trend-hop. stardew valley was heavily inspired by classic harvest moon games, but now farming games just feel like theyre riding the coattails of SV's popularity. so no matter what the intention is, it seems more shallow than other games like it its weird that its an indie game too. usually spiritual successors are like "you liked this old-school classic, well now you get a sequel!" but... celeste was only 5 years old when germinal released, EXOK havent even released their next project yet. the fact that its an indie game complicates things too. yooka-laylee had a rebellious air because they were making another classic colectathon because Rare/Microsoft wouldn't, but you cant really have that attitude towards a smaller team. ultimately i think its a shame its so similar. i havent tried it myself, but it seems like people really enjoy this game. but every single steam review mentions celeste in one way or the other, dooming this game to live in its shadow. there are tons of games hollow knight inspired, like crowsworn and constance, that still do enough to establish their own identity. they couldve done more with what they had, so theyre not taking ideas straight from EXOK and so the players get to have something more unique that stands on its own

[@jonathanfuchs6262]

I just tweeted this and tagged you but YOU CAN LITERALLY NEUTRAL JUMP

[@emmas1366]

fr? thats wild. some of this is really minor, like squash and stretch of fastfall is super normal and understandable, but the dust bunnies are uncomfortably close. I can't really think of any big reason neutral jumping should be in a game other than trying to copy celeste lol

[@victorjohnson5646]

you can but it's precise and only gets you like 10 pixels of height.

[@westform22]

I think most of the stuff you said are a bit of a stretch

[@everydaysniper9390]

I am not entirely sure about how to feel about this. On one hand, it definitely feels wrong. On the other, this is kind of how some genres of video games grew. DOOM kickstarted the FPS genre, and for a while almost every FPS was a "DOOM clone", in a similar fashion to how Germinal is a "clone" of Celeste. The problem is that we are so far past the beginner stages of the platformer genre, so does that make this behavior of "cloning" wrong?

[@idadeerz]

That's kind of the point i tried to raise in the video. Ofcourse you can't compare something like Call of Duty to Doom and pretend it's a clone (just like how Super Mario Bros. and Celeste are ultimately very different games despite both being platformers), but in this sense, i guess it's more like Doom vs. Heretic or one of the many other doomclones out there?

[@adamkorinek2469]

Celeste is my favorite game but I also completed Germinal and I can say that the amount of similarity didn't one bit take away from the experience. It's also interesting that you brought up the save slots while Germinal's phone like UI was definitely a highlight and was very original. Plus the main mechanic is definitely closer in nature to a double jump, and adding a hover on top of that makes for some unique energy management, almost like if in Celeste dashing cost a bit of stamina. I personally don't mind this kind of "plagiarism"

[@victorjohnson5646]

*Loud incorrect buzzer*

[@blueboytube]

My person opinion is: The gameplay is original enough to be its own game however the artstyle and design choices are too similar to Celeste. They should try putting their own style into it. It has the potential to be a stand alone game

[@marbyyy7810]

v-ida-o essay

[@Gabriel64468]

It's really weird that they chose to copy so many small things. The game looks decent and outside of dustbunnies most mechanics are basic enough that I don't think them on their own would be an issue, but then why is the artstyle so similar? The VFX, level select, tutorial?

[@spoopu9947]

Honestly, I don't care that much, if the game is good, It's fine. But if it's not...

[@fifsqueak]

0 iq thinking

[@foiled9491]

your way of thinking is like that bike cuck meme

[@spoopu9947]

@@fifsqueak Ok to clarify, I wasn't referring to plagiarism lol. I phrased this comment super poorly. What I meant was that being heavily inspired by something and using a similar artstyle is totally fine, but when it is less so of an inspiration and more blatant theft, it isn't really ok anymore. So basically an obvious point that I didn't have to make... lol

[@licoricetea.]

Famous quote- "Amateurs copy, artists steal". I heard it in the context of music originally but the idea extends further. I agree with a couple of the other comments here; while it's a bit unsettling, it's definitely a passion project made in honor and out of inspiration of Celeste. We'll see how the story pans out.

[@CalvinBensonOfficial]

i actually support germinal, because its clear its being made out of love for celeste, and not just to rip it off.

[@smokescreamlive9191]

While I definitely believe there is a certain line between stealing a games mechanics / style and taking inspiration from it, I feel like in some cases it should be ok to near-replicate another game and release it, as long as you're not literally remaking the exact mechanics, story, levels and so on. If it's not broke, don't fix it. I see it almost as no different from modding games, except it's from the ground up, you have creative freedom to do whatever you want and you might get paid for it.

[@noface7842]

....Is it just me or was there more to Germinal's dash than just a dash? I'm pretty sure you could hover similar in a way in super mario sunshine...

[@chaotixspark7934]

>Objective way. I think it began as objective, but only pointing out the similarities and not the differences seems like a huge red flag for biased criticism. At the very beginning of the video, you trash Germinal and praise Celeste, which doesn't seem very objective right out of the game. But maybe you just really enjoy Celeste. But it's weird to mention speed running tech when Germinal isn't out yet. So how can you comment on that if the game isn't out yet? Here's a big difference that I don't really see you touch on at all. Wave dashing. Wave dashing and (extended) hyper dashing are pretty big level design throughout the game, allowing for skips that the EXOK games designed on purpose as well as hidden hearts that require it. You also don't point out that there's a float mechanic which is VERY different compared to Celeste's design, more so looking like Peach's float from Mario 2 but also enabling a player to dash out of it. Simply adding a float changes the how the developer has to design a level. Like think of the big chasm in Celeste in 1A that requires either a extended hyper to keep your dash and get across or a momentum block. That entire level is made trivial with the ability to float. at 2:50 you seem to point out a similarity of the room, but a MAJOR difference in that same room. Germinal, when the character touches a surface, it leaves behind a spike obstacle. Although the design does look similar to Celeste, that entire mechanic is very different. In Celeste, it is only set blocks that have little designations that tell you "Oh, if you stand here, spikes will appear after you leave making you think where to stand on the journey back." In Germinal, it looks like its every surface, most likely to combat your ability to float. In conclusion, this seems like a half hearted attempt at some views by throwing a beginner game developer under the bus. Your editing was great, you have good prose, and you seem like a fan of games. But the lack of research annoyed me to no end. You could have defined what plagiarism is, which is "noun. the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." and referred to it as fair use instead. Because fair use law is more digestible and interactable than picking out how plagiarism works. Yes, you have stated that you aren't aware of laws or the technical side of the game to be able to make a call... so why not do some research and make those calls in the video? That point of this video is to send a strong message to fellow youtuber watchers and the content creator on what kind of content I would actually want to see. In short, go watch FUNKe or Leon Massey instead.

[@WingBreakerMusic]

Hey there, lead sound designer of Moonlit Monitors here. First off, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your comment!

[@theta4951]

This video is just done in extremely poor taste to farm views and clearly shows bias without demonstrating a full picture. I’ve played germinal, back when I was streaming Celeste full time the devs (absolute sweethearts btw) gave me a copy to try on stream and I absolutely loved it and so did all my viewers. Of course the game feels similar and looks similar and guess what, that’s fine. Please don’t use the word “plagiarism” when that’s clearly not even remotely accurate. All you’re doing is hurting the sales of a game by trying to clickbait Celeste fans.

[@tiaguinho_samba]

Some of the stuff is just dishonest but it's clear that it's not just inspired and i think that's already clear with the dash mechanic The main thing i wanted to know about the game is: what makes it different from celeste, gameplay wise? Yeah, of course the levels are going to be different but the dash is kinda of what makes celeste unique, it's not knew but the level design around it and the way it's implemented is super original, different from rhis Germinal game

[@guse7688]

I feel like the creator of the video kinda showed the "dash mechanic" in a misleading way. It's more like the water nozzles from super mario sunshine, you can hover with your water and boost in some directions with it.

[@victorjohnson5646]

@@guse7688 I agree. It is way more similar to fludd than anything from celeste

[@nestarothgamer]

Jajaja queríamos otro juego como celeste, pero no un plagio de celeste. Hay mucha diferencia entre ambas cosas... La gente ya no sabe qué hacer...

[@Sikanda.]

The german team might have made a competent game but It's more of a clone than an actual hommage. It's basically Celeste with another skin.

[@partlyawesome]

vibeo good

[@catharsis9789]

i mean, no ill will to the devs it just feels like they r shooting themselves in the foot, a lot of effort to make a game thats so easy to write off. The fludd type thing deff has some unique features but if im just gonna be doing mirror temple again thn i will not be playing

[@deadtwinsen]

time to become radicalized by you tube video essay

[@lonelyPorterCH]

They look way too similar, art style, level design, mechanics Its like they just looked what celeste did and copied it

[@ballsalsda]

Who else came here from the cohost post

[@Banana_Slugcat]

The dust bunnies are identical lmao didn't even try

[@guse7688]

I actually disagree with your sentiment here. This game and the creator have stated that they took a LOT of inspiration from celeste and that is certainly hard to miss, but I feel like you accounted too many things as just something taken from celeste. I would look into the game Crowsworn, it was also berraded for being an "obvious plagerism" to the game Hollow Knight because it's artstyle was very similar and was a metroid vania like hollow knight, but people soon learnt that it was more than just a hollow knight rip off and was even supported by the creators of hollow knight, team cherry games. Also it's just a demo right now, give them time to flesh it out more and hopefully find it's own personality.

[@bounana]

Like a lot of people have said in your comments, the editing is incredible. Yet, I think this game isn't as plagiarist as some other titles I've seen. The mechanics of the game look sufficiently different from Celeste, the dash blocks are a bit slower, the 3-file menu is just a standard at this point, and the physics look a little different. However, I do think you make a good point about the collectibles, level menus and especially the visual concept. This video was overall well polished and interesting, keep up the great work, but some of the points were a bit too nit-picky and not really plagiarizing enough to complain about, in my opinion.

[@findot777]

it's when you copy the design of the game

[@gaia38ant]

what the actual f

[@linjkarma7760]

aiaiai

[@Mart1n192]

eh, I've seen worse rip-offs

[@StockaOfficial]

It should have been a celeste modification

[@achehex]

I really feel like if you had enough valid points you wouldn't have had to pad the list so much, in a rapid fire of nonsense that just exaggerates the issue. 3 save slots? Tilesites with a dark center and light outside that helps denote collisions? Programmatic squash and stretch? Next you are gonna fault them for having a game title that is just one word.

[@jonathanfuchs6262]

just tried a bit of the demo i wanted to see for myself. abhorrent. it's so blatant

[@yarrowcentral]

Yeah but Germinal is a boy! 🤦‍♂lol As for consequences, I sure hope the gaming community recognizes this and doesn't support Germinal, and goes out of their way to support Celeste even further. Thank you for covering this

[@Mqstodon]

This whole video is a show of bad faith to wreck up-coming indie devs with baseless accusations through an incredible biased view. Shame on you, really.

[@togekiss09]

Baseless?