I would like to spend every day playing rock climbing games, which are currently the closest I can get to actual climbing until I somehow solve all of my scheduling problems and go to the gym again. But in the absence of having a life that makes sense, at least I can play the demo for Cairn, a game that caught my eye the moment it was announced back at Summer Game Fest, and which I am so excited to finally get my hands on.
The demo, out now, features the game’s introductory area and an early game rock face to scale. It introduces the game’s story of protagonist Aava planning to scale a mountain called Kami, which no human has climbed before, and which less than half have returned from. To accomplish this, she has a robot buddy who can supply her with pitons, letting her build and retrieve anchors as she climbs higher and higher.
I struggled a bit to get the hang of the actual climbing, which sits somewhere between games like Jusant and Valley Peaks that focus more on anchor points and full body movement, and games like New Heights and Crux that focus on moving each limb individually. You control each of Aava’s limbs, but the game chooses which arm or leg you move; you position them with your left thumbstick and then place them by pressing X. I struggled to get a hang of this, feeling like I couldn’t always get Aava to make the moves I would have made in the order I wanted to make them in. I sometimes found myself trying to outthink the game’s choices by rapidly pressing X, but this wasn’t a great strategy either. The climbing felt the best when I tried to move more quickly, but not so quickly that I got myself tangled up and fell. I appreciate the way Cairn’s design does away with some of the tedious micro-management of more methodical games, but I’m not quite sure it works for me yet. The opening gym area has lots of optional routes you can climb outside the tutorial; I’ve already spent way too much time with them and am looking forward to spending more until I feel like I have the climbing down.
Even in these man-made areas, there are no pre-set routes in Cairn; you can try to climb anything, whether or not it’s a viable way to go. Developer The Game Bakers told Game Developer that “there is no human-made animation” given this freedom, which means I sometimes twisted Aava into disturbing shapes. But it does mean you need to pay attention to your environment and think about route planning (my least strong climbing skill). You also need to pay a lot of attention to Aava to tell how a climb is going; she’ll gasp and shake if you’re in a bad position, making the climbing feel visceral and intense. You can recover your stamina with a button press if you’re in a good spot, and you can also place pitons, which you can hang from to recover or to go into your inventory. These also make sure that if you fall, you don’t die or end up all the way back on the ground.
Even if I’m still feeling out the climbing, what I unreservedly love about Cairn is its survival elements. You can enter Aava’s bivouac, where she can use destroyed pitons to create new ones, sleep to recover health, and cook on a hanging camping stove. I love the cooking, which lets you combine ingredients into meals that, when you eat in your tent, feature the delightful touch of their UI description getting bites taken out of it until it’s gone. I was so enamored of this system that I cooked and ate all my food almost immediately, needlessly chowing down on instant noodles and a sad hot chocolate made from water, and then needed food later and didn’t have it. You can forage for food in the world, as well as refill your water bottles from streams. All this stuff goes in your backpack, another awesome touch: everything is just piled up in there, and you can shake it around and see it move.
The idea of a game with climbing mechanics combined with survival elements is basically a game designed specifically for me to spend all my time in. When combined with the freedom to choose your own way up the mountain, I am so psyched for what Cairn is doing, even if I'm still feeling it out. I am going to publish this blog and then keep playing it, which you can do now too.
