I’ve finally gotten some time to sit down with recently-released climbing game Cairn, after really liking the demo back in 2024. I’m finding the full game a fair bit more challenging, but one aspect I continue to love is protagonist Aava’s tent and all the things you can do in it.
In Cairn, climber Aava is attempting to reach the summit of the imposing Mount Kami on her own, with only the help of a robot that can repair and retrieve pitons. It’s tough going: you need to carefully find your route up various walls, choosing the right handholds and thinking about your limb and body placement to prevent Aava from growing exhausted and plummeting to her doom. I’m struggling a little with the way the game automatically selects which limb Aava moves, though you can also control this manually; I feel like she doesn’t always do what I intend, and I sometimes wish the simulated climbing were a little more detailed so I could employ certain techniques that, as ever, I recognize are probably way too complicated to portray in a video game. My Aava will sometimes ragdoll, or bend her limbs differently than a real-life climber, and sometimes this means I feel like I’m making a “good” move, only for the reality to not quite live up to my vision.
I’ve found it helpful to turn on the indicator of whether a hold is good or not, even though it feels a little against the spirit of the game, which wants you to figure things out based on Aava’s reactions. But it’s been a compromise I’ve made against the way I’m finding myself playing the game surprisingly impatiently. I’m a climber in real life, though I have been woefully short on time to actually go climbing (also, all the gyms near me changed ownership and now I can’t decide which, if either, to join). When I climbed, I loved the feeling of carefully puzzling out a route in a sport that’s both physical and mental, but I’m having trouble tapping into that while playing Cairn. I get annoyed when Aava doesn’t move in the way I imagine in my head, when the game’s auto limb system keeps insisting on hands when I want to move feet, when Aava begins to shudder on a hold I swear is fine even though the game is telling me different. I’m trying to brute force things way more than I should, and when that obviously doesn’t work out I default to trying to brute force things more, even though I know the game is much more enjoyable (and full of less deaths) when I take a moment to think through my moves, or zoom out to consider a route instead of just leaping on the wall and thinking I’ll figure it out as I go (one of my biggest flaws in real-life climbing too, for what it’s worth). I’ve been disappointed to see this tendency in myself; it’s not how the game wants to be played, and it’s certainly not how I want to live my life. When I play the game patiently and thoughtfully, it’s wonderfully challenging and peaceful, but I inevitably blow it and struggle to keep my head.
So my experience of Cairn has been a bit antagonistic and exhausting, largely through my own doing, and I’ve relished the moments of respite between climbs. You can save your game only at certain points, which also give you the option to set up your tent. All of your gear is piled around you inside, and you can repair pitons, cook, recycle trash to turn into climbing chalk, reorganize your gear by shaking your bag (something I loved in the demo, and still love), check the weather, or sleep, read, or do pushups until it’s time to start climbing again.
I love games that have little survival chores, so I love futzing around inside the tent and getting things organized for the next day. I repair the pitons I destroyed by placing them in a panic; I combine the ingredients I gathered into food that has the added benefit of freeing up space in my bag for more stuff; I retape my fingers and refill my chalk. Recently, low on food, I found a pond full of fish to catch, and after a hard climb to a save point, it was lovely to spend an in-game evening turning all of it into rations for the journey to come. I love the way the game will show me shots of the tent from the outside, a little glowing oasis against the wilderness, and how I can see the light changing as time passes through the open tent flap. It reminds me of all the camping I used to do and how much I miss it, the way settling into my tent for the night could feel like a reward for a hard day’s travel or a chance to reset and make the next day go better.
With its slow pace and many moving pieces, Cairn really feels like a big journey, and the attention paid to Aava’s tent enhances that feeling. I really feel like I’m on my own out in the wilderness, the way I felt on my bike trips back in DC, and even though my approach is making me frustrated with the game, there’s something peaceful about the feeling of having everything I need around me. On my own trips, I loved how manageable and self-contained life could feel, the freedom of only being responsible for myself; I see the same tendency in Aava with the way she ignores messages from her friends and family. (On my own trips, I was very careful to check in with people who knew where I was, both for my own safety and not to worry people.) Maybe some of my frustration with the game is that it’s reminding me of a kind of person I used to be that I miss; moments spent in Aava’s tent are moments when I get to sit with that feeling without the pressures of climbing, and preparing for the next day is a way to remind myself that I could be that person tomorrow if I just choose to, instead of being upset with myself for my flailing and short-tempered approaches on the wall.
So far my experience with Cairn feels way more about me than it does about the game, which I really wasn’t expecting. It’s led me to gaze longingly at my disused climbing shoes and all the bikepacking gear piled up in my closet, trying to imagine a middle ground between “no time to do the hobbies I used to love” and “abandon my whole life and just bike off into the woods.” I’m curious to see if Aava can find a middle ground as the game’s story continues, and we’ll see if I can find one as well.
