Crystal Heart Gate

Crystal Heart Gates are cyan-colored barriers that block Madeline from advancing unless she has a set number of crystal hearts collected within a given save file. It comes available in several different widths, each suited to accommodate a different number of hearts. If Madeline stands to the left of a closed crystal heart gate, it will start counting the number of hearts she has; if there are enough, the gate will open up from the center, horizontally, with a "flash" line effect.

Crystal Heart Gates can either appear at a given location "sitting" there (preexisting), or via falling from above, after going past a trigger. Falling Crystal Heart Gates are the only object that can kill Madeline if she has Invincibility turned on via Assist Mode or Variant Mode.

Occurrence

In vanilla Celeste, Crystal Heart Gates are present in:

• Core A-Side, in the third room; this gate is preexisting, of a smaller width, and requires four (4) hearts to open.
• Core B-Side, in the second room; this gate is preexisting, of a moderate width, and requires fifteen (15) hearts to open.
• Core C-Side, in the first room; this gate is preexisting, of a larger width, and requires twenty-three (23) hearts to open.
• Farewell, in the first room of the Event Horizon subchapter; this gate is falling, of a moderate width, and requires fifteen (15) hearts to open.

Trivia

• Cheat Mode allows Madeline to bypass Crystal Heart Gates, regardless of how many crystal hearts she has collected so far. However, falling Crystal Heart Gates can still kill her.
• It's possible to skip the heart gate in Farewell by doing a quick Superdash followed by a Wavedash. It allows the player to skip the long opening animation.
  • The Farewell heart gate is also the only entity that can kill a player using invincibility. Unlike other entities that could crush the player, the gate doesn't become transparent when the player is inside.
• When Farewell was in development, it was supposed to be gated behind 25 hearts at first (all crystal hearts through 8C, plus the gray heart in Farewell), but eventually the amount was lowered to 15, and the gate was moved to the middle of the chapter, as new rooms came to give newer players at least a preview of the new chapter. This means that it is effectively possible to start Farewell with 5 hearts, the 4 it takes to unlock Core A-Side, plus the heart you get for completing Core A-Side.