The Game Bakers never make the same experience twice. 2016’s Furi was a twin-stick arcade boss gauntlet, mixing fast-paced action with a constant supply of formidable foes. 2020’s Haven, meanwhile, wove an unusual RPG adventure around two lovers exploring an unknown world to turn it into their home.

Keeping with this trend of unpredictable oven concoctions, 2026’s Cairn is a rock-climbing simulator that tasks players with summiting the formidable, albeit fictional Kami, while scavenging and managing resources to keep hunger, thirst, and warmth satisfied throughout the perilous journey. It’s a curious, arguably hard sell to typical gamers, but letting this title slip through their grasp would see them missing out on the opportunity to touch eternity.

This “esoteric” desire is what the protagonist, Aava, shares in the game’s opening moments, carrying little weight without context. Over a dozen hours of playtime later, what compelled her up the mountain, even when faced with a seemingly insurmountable avalanche of hazards, becomes clearer.

Players aren’t prodigies like Aava, however, at least not yet! Cairn does a satisfactory job teaching the basics of rock climbing in a training environment at Kami’s base camp. Granted, very little is said of how one should effectively balance their weight, what sort of movement is best for smooth stability, and so on. The act of methodically moving a foot or arm after the other to anchor and progress is sufficiently covered, thankfully. What’s neat is that the game automatically chooses the best limb to move next, but it’s possible to manually select each to achieve a better position if needed.

True muscle memory and learning the best line to follow only come after the first few hours of the ascent, where you’re almost guaranteed to tumble to your death if pitons aren’t placed regularly and strategically. There are only a finite number of these fancy stakes in a player’s inventory at any given time, and choosing when and where to deploy them, both as a mini checkpoint and crucial moment of respite, requires careful consideration and planning.

Sometimes it’s a hasty decision because Aava is simply too exhausted to continue in that moment, or in desperate need of sustenance to regain her composure. The way up isn’t necessarily obvious either.

It’s not due to endless cliff faces and the like, as Kami is a surprisingly merciful mountain when it comes to routes, presenting different layers of choice in each. A straight line, for instance, might be the quickest way to reach the next plateau, yet it’s likely to have fewer nooks and crannies, making it riskier to tackle. An indirect and safer path, conversely, will take longer to snake up, meaning Aava needs more sustenance to complete it.

Newcomers will typically throw speed and timesaving out the window to go with the latter, where they will be rewarded in other ways. Kami is riddled with surprises in the form of wild berry bushes, abandoned climbing camps, and cave networks that once housed a tribe of troglodytes. It’s almost always worth exploring off the beaten path, even if it means burning through more food and water.

The pay-off isn’t just finding extra goodies to stuff into Aava’s backpack (itself requiring a level of micromanagement to keep organised and filled to the brim). Poking around yields scratches on walls, scribbles in notebooks, and occasionally an encounter with someone or something else, alive or long dead. This is where Cairn starts to take a meaningful form, offering small crevices and bumps of backstory for players to grab onto.

Finding a skeleton tucked away in a ravine or hidden in the back of a cave grows the list of climbers who tried their luck on Kami, only to fail and remain as a warning for others. A scrap of paper in their possession may offer a fresh perspective, a connection to another unlucky soul that was spotted further back down the summit, or a helpful clue on a recommended route. They may hold a stash of supplies too, which Aava often insists they would’ve wanted her to have.

Climbot – a handy mechanical assistant that collects pitons on command every time safety is reached – also relays a regular stream of calls from those back home. There are messages of encouragement from loved ones mixed with requests from an agent who is doing his best to keep stakeholders satisfied with news on the star climber’s ascent. There is zero reciprocation, even if these calls carry notes of distress. Aava continues to climb, isolating herself from those around her, determined to chase the next impossible milestone.

A quote from real-life mountaineer Reinhold Messner captures her attitude and mindset perfectly. “I didn’t go up there to die. I went up there to live,” he said about one of his Mount Everest climbs (where, out of interest, he secured a Guinness World Record decades ago). Unfortunately for Aava, she believes that her demons remain behind on ground level. The sharp reality is that they always come along for the ride, dragging along as extra weight.

This lends itself to a fascinating combination of gameplay and storytelling, the two of which are carefully balanced like the game’s very namesake. Our protagonist’s internal summit isn’t explicit, nor are its specifics shouted from the rooftops (or mountain). However, it acts as a canvas for players to project their own struggle up Kami, letting their footsteps mirror Aava’s in a different way.

Climbing is certainly no walk in the park, and getting from one point to the next is further complicated by rain, wind, and other natural hazards. Save points are scattered generously across the range, yet there’s always the danger of falling and losing fifteen to thirty minutes (or more) of progress between each. It’s disheartening, not to mention frustrating on some of the more demanding sections where a safe ledge might’ve been within reach were it not for a single poor choice of movement.

On top of this, at any point in the game, it’s possible to activate a free roaming camera to pan around or fly down, never up, keeping the next section a complete mystery. While it’s helpful to scout the wall at the current elevation, one can never quite make out where the top of Kami is, creating the daunting illusion that there’s no end in sight.

But that massive scale has two sides. Zooming out regularly to see every small inch of victory compound into larger progress, despite all the hours of pain it took to get there, provides an inexplicable sense of accomplishment – it’s tough not to be awed by how far you’ve come.  

Kami may be an overwhelming monster. However, this beast also happens to be beautiful. Cairn’s art style is a gorgeous moving watercolour painting, providing a steady stream of serene scenes and general calmness. It’s not felt just during moments of respite or cinematics either. Panning the camera around at any given moment will reward the player with a postcard-perfect snap, whether it be a stunning skyscape, setting sun, or striking silhouette.

You may now be wondering how a game can be tense and cathartic, or stressful and cosy all at the same time? There are strong parallels to Celeste, another title about climbing a mountain, wrapped up in an excellent 2D retro platformer. Like Madeline’s victories became the player’s there, so do Aava’s here. It all comes down to something being outright impossible, until it’s faced head on enough times to become trivial in the best, most addictive way imaginable.

Suddenly, Aava’s thirst for victory is tangible. Her internal worries and woes may not overlap with a player’s in every single way, but there’s common ground enough in wanting to see the journey to its end. Even if it once seemed unthinkable.

On that, no gamer should believe that Cairn isn’t for them. It can be tailored through a host of features, including the ability to rewind from a fall, switch on infinite climbing resources, turn off the survival aspect (hunger, thirst, etc.), and more.

The Game Bakers may have had challenge as their intention, but they were kind enough not to leave it as an unmovable obstacle. In fact, the team poses an open-ended, almost vague question in the closing moments: What is your mountain? Whatever it is, Kami is waiting to help you find an answer through Aava’s hands, on your own terms.

Cairn released for PlayStation 5 and PC on 29 January.


Cairn review

Gruelling gameplay balanced with moments of quiet beauty and introspection, Cairn offers a hand to a truly unique, if unusual game. The journey it offers may be unrelenting at times, but those who brave it to the end will see that the view at the top is well worth the struggle.

9
Cairn was reviewed on PC