Meet Monika, variety streamer and modder/map-maker! You can check out their mods and socials on their website or find them on Bluesky!

Tell me about yourself! Who are you and what kinds of gaming do you enjoy? Hi! I’m known as Monika / Monika523 at the moment. I enjoy all kinds of gaming, honestly, though at the same time I’m kinda picky lol.

How did you get into gaming? Been hard into gaming for my whole life, really. it must've started at an age so young I can't remember anything about it

How did you get into speedrunning? What was the first game you attempted to speedrun? I guess I just saw some speedruns (possibly GDQ) and was like “That looks like a fun thing to do." I was always very creatively minded, so when I got bored of a game I was playing I often came up with little challenges or challenge run ideas, so this was one more to add to that list. Though I wouldn't call speedruns my favorite type of challenge run necessarily, it is quite nice because you can apply it to any game.

The first game I remember properly running was The Witness. When I first played through that game I was so in love with it, it's just so interesting and intricate, but so relaxing and beautiful at the same time. I was kinda terrible at it though, I think about half the puzzles (possibly more) I had to look up the solutions to. But yeah, I remember seeing a speedrunner called FearfulFerret do a 100% run of that game, and I was like... what if I learn this? And so I did. It's basically a giant gauntlet of memorizing every puzzle solution and that felt really satisfying to be able to pull off.

What is your favourite type(s) of challenge run? Dunno, I like coming up with them when I play a game, so they're often game-specific! I do like deathless / hitless runs though.

What game(s) are you currently playing? I played Xenoblade 3 a while ago and it became one my new favorite games. I still play it sometimes, particularly when my girlfriend is over so we can play the bingo I made for the DLC. I'm also still playing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Repentance DLC) (or Repentance Plus now, i guess?), even though I've 100 percented it already. It's basically my speed game at the moment. I also do co-op runs of Rabbit & Steel with my gf sometimes. There's a DLC coming out for that next year so I guess we'll be doing that when the time comes. Oh, did I mention Celeste? That's like my thing. Funnily enough I don't play it that much anymore though outside of the custom maps I make for it.

What is your favourite game strategy? Like, for games in general? I don’t know, I guess when I'm playing a game for the first time, I try to be pretty strategic and learn about the mechanics at a pace I can manage.

What are the gaming achievements you are most proud of? I got a whole spreadsheet of those. It's private though, so I'll just list some in no particular order.

• Beat Touhou 15 on Lunatic Mode, and earlier today (yesterday) Touhou 18 as well! That felt awesome.
• Celeste Max%, plus I did a bunch of modded deathless runs (golden berries), mostly for the maps I made, which are very hard
• Binding of Isaac: Repentance 100%
• Beat Ante 16 in Balatro, that was pretty cool
• As of right now, my girlfriend and I hold the world record for Rabbit & Steel 2-Player Hard Mode. Might be the first WR I had, so that's kinda sick

What are the most challenging aspects of gaming for you? Probably when I have to do a bunch of reading all at once. Or just when things are complicated and I actually have to bother to learn it.

Do you have any gaming goals you are working on/would like to work on? I would like to get a clean, maybe deathless, all tainted characters run in Binding of Isaac. Probably not gonna happen any time soon though because I'm doing ILs at the moment. Also I WILL beat Sonic and the Secret Rings. I HAVE to.

What is the most underrated game you have played? Kororinpa. It's an actual masterpiece and no one ever talks about it. For reference, it's a marble-rolling game, kinda like Super Monkey Ball but less arcade-y I guess.

What is your favourite gaming memory? My greatest memories I have from videogames are from Super Mario Galaxy, Xenoblade 3 (and the other ones in that series, but mostly 3 cause I actually played it), The Witness, maybe Minecraft?

Any tips for staying positive while gaming? Learn and play at your own pace. Don't let others make you feel like you "need to do better" or "aren't good enough" or anything like that. Try to notice when you're starting to rage and take a break. Take many. Things aren't going your way right now? Take a break. Also, if the game just isn't fun, why not play something else? Could always come back later or just leave it.

What is the most memorable interaction you have had with someone in gaming? I'm honestly not super socially active (oops), so i can't think of anything in this regard.

I also saw that you create Celeste mods! How did you start creating mods? Do you just mod Celeste or have you ventured into other games? I sure do! Before Celeste, I've always been looking for an actually good level-creating tool. I've been a level designer for basically forever, but for a long time I had to draw my ideas for video game levels on paper (which was cool to be fair), but I did really want to make them actually real in some way.

I've made tons of things like Minecraft adventure maps, RPG Maker games, and also just games I made myself. But the most recent custom levels I made before Celeste was for The End Is Nigh. I made a pretty big level pack for that game that replaces the original screens with... well, new ones. They were harder? Sometimes? But not really. Anyway, none of that stuff has ever seen the light of day, and so Celeste is the thing people know me for.

As for how I started modding Celeste, I just looked up "celeste level editor" on the internet, and found this thing called Ahorn, a Celeste map creation tool. Then I think I proceeded to spend about 3 days trying to install the damn thing. Nearly gave up, but I really, really wanted it to work cause I had some exciting ideas for Celeste levels. So in the end, after re-installing Ahorn a bunch and trying out different things to try and get it to run, it did eventually work. And so I made my first level, a level based on the B-Side of Core (Chapter 8 in Celeste, the last one in the game at the time), which would later be called "Core D", a.k.a. the Core D-Side. For reference, there are also C-Sides in the base game, so the D-Sides are like the follow-up from those. For this, I literally just edited the vanilla Core B-Side map file, though after that map I started making them from scratch.

Do you have any tips or advice for anyone looking to create their own mods? Here's how to make your own Celeste maps:

• Get Everest (the mod loader, you kinda need it)
• Get Lönn (the successor to Ahorn, much faster and easier to install.) ...that's basically it! For the details, there's tutorials and further info on the Everest Wiki.

And here's some hot insider tips:

• Don't join the Celeste Discord. I know they love telling you to do it and how cool it is, but don't.
• Don't assume that someone seeming "big" or "important" in the celeste modding scene makes them worth or interacting with.
• If you think making your own map from scratch is too hard, edit one of the vanilla maps. They should be in your game files somewhere, you can just open them in Lönn / Ahorn.
• This is less celeste mapping advice, and more general level-making advice: Don't compare your stuff to other people. It's easy to get discouraged when you look at other people's work. There's no point. You should make stuff first-and-foremost for yourself, and maybe your friends if they're into it. If it's fun to make and/or play, then you did a good job.
• If you need help with making your celeste map, I might be willing to help. Feel free to message me.

What are your gaming handles and socials, if you would like to share them? You can find all my socials here. But also here's my Bluesky, where I’m the most active and announce all the stuff I do. Here's my Youtube. I post videos, sometimes.

Is there anything else you would like to share? meowers