I’ve been playing Valley Peaks, a rock climbing game for PC and Switch that came out in late July. While it isn’t the climbing game of my dreams because maybe nothing can be, I would 100% move to its setting and live there forever.
You play as a frog person who has come to finish the work your father started of placing radios on the tops of mountains to connect the area to the outside world. This is ostensibly for some corporation, and while I haven’t finished the game, I get the sense there’s more to this story than just doing a job. To get to these mountain peaks, you climb routes of varying difficulties scattered across the game’s world.
Mountains have different difficulties, portrayed by a star rating. Some of them are straightforward climbs, swinging and jumping between rocks and the occasional wooden pole. Touching these poles in order fills out a stamp card; when you have three stamps, you can trade it in for an upgrade, such as a watch that slows down time or a glider that lets you soar off peaks. Other routes are more complicated. Some have rocks that collapse if you hold them too long, or ones you can only climb on when they’re a certain color. Others have moving train cars that require careful timing to navigate, or spiked plants that push you back. Given that the game is first-person, I sometimes had trouble understanding where my body was in space and struggled with some routes. I also indulged in my fatal real-life climbing flaw of neglecting to read a route before getting on it, and often found myself halfway up a mountain with no idea where to go next.
The routes have a lot of variety and often require some exciting jumps or risky moves, and summiting the harder ones feels like a real achievement. I tend to want realism in my climbing games (and all my games, and, well, all the media I enjoy), but I appreciate Valley Peaks’ flights of climbing fancy. They make the routes feel challenging and adventurous, and add a certain time pressure to some climbs that feels exciting without being too stressful–if you fall all the way to the ground, you lose the progress toward your stamp, but you’re otherwise fine.
The mountains you climb jut out of a surprisingly large and populated landscape, full of other climbers who brag about the local vibes and point you in the direction of things to do. You sometimes encounter people where you wouldn't expect it during your climbs, and they tell you interesting lore about the area. On the ground, there are towns where you can do tasks for the locals, like finding their missing items, delivering their mail, or fixing things up. There's also a surprising, and somewhat overwhelming, amount of collectibles to gather–screws, pictures, mushrooms, and more–some of whose purpose I suspect, as an open world game, I missed the explanation for somewhere along the line. This has made my experience of the game feel a little cluttered and busy, but these activities also provide a nice break when I get frustrated failing a climb, and make the world feel like your character has entered into a fully-formed community.
Valley Peaks’ world is a painting-like mix of lines and splashes of color. There are forests and beaches, and from the top of a mountain, the horizon stretches on forever. It’s really beautiful, and I keep finding myself wishing I could live in its mountain town. There’s one character I keep seeing riding a bike along the area’s trail system, and every time I see them I sigh "I wish I were doing that." You might know that I recently moved back to New York City after some time in DC; while I’m glad to be back in a place where I have friends, I’ve found myself really missing DC’s easier access to the outdoors. Valley Peaks’ fantasy town feels like a version of all the things I miss: just leaving my front door and being in the woods, surrounded by other outdoorsy people eager to tell me a story or lend me a hand. I’ve been enjoying just wandering around Valley Peaks, taking in its lovely environment and chatting with its characters, imagining what it would be like to be able to be outside doing a sport I love all day.
While running away to live permanently on my bike is one of my backup plans if Aftermath doesn’t pan out, I also know that I’m in my 40s now, burdened with a bum knee and student loans; the dirtbag climber life is probably off the table for me, though I’ll never say never. I’m glad Valley Peaks can let me live some of that fantasy in video game form.
