I am not a rock climber. I climbed trees as a kid and even did some mild climbing on rock walls at a local Rec Center but I haven’t done so in decades. More so, I haven’t played many climbing games either. But I’m not opposed to the idea of playing them.
Enter: Day, the Steam Spring Sale has started and I decided to buy Cairn because...well...why the fuck not. I heard good things from The Besties podcast that did an episode on it back when it came out so I figured I could always try it out and if I hated it because of the survival aspect then I could return it within that 2 hour window.
What ended up happening was not something I expected, nor something I quite realized had happened until I wrote this review. I adored Cairn, not just because it’s a good game but because it’s a good experience. One that made me feel emotions, one that I related to immensely, and one that I think even more people should play if you haven’t already. So let’s get into more detail about what I thought and why I thought it and...actually I’m just gonna get on with it now.
You play as Aava, who is trying her best to climb the mountain Kami as a way of avoiding life and all that it entails. She meets people on her journey up, learns about the people that used to live there, and sees people who failed at climbing the mountain. And is still continuing to avoid life and all it entails. Obviously not a story that many people can relate to. But will Aava make it to the top? Will she give up and come back down? Will she ever actually face what life is putting on her plate? It’s up to you to help her climb and find out.
First, as I’ve talked time and time again about accessibility (mainly here in my difficulty accessibility article), I think it makes sense to cover this at the top. I went into Cairn incredibly apprehensive, I’ve played two climbing games before and had mixed success (Grow Home was not a good time for me but Peak was fun). But once I turned on the game and saw the accessibility options and different difficulty modes I instantly knew I was going to love this game. First off, the game has 3 different difficulty modes, I played on Explorer. Essentially, this mode lowered how intense the survival aspect of the game was and also allowed me to rewind after every fall that I had. Then in the assist (accessibility) settings I was able to actually deactivate ALL survival aspects of the game and also give myself infinite climbing gear resources and allow the game to autosave every time I came to a solid surface to stand on. These all changed the fucking game for me. Gone was the nerve racking worry about falling because of Aava being super finicky with her controls, gone was the frustration with survival mechanics that annoy me rather than make me feel more entrenched in the games atmosphere. All of a sudden I could enjoy the game how I wanted to enjoy it. The Game Bakers gave me a game about overcoming your own mountain, finding the thing that you’re stuck on and learning to either overcome it or fully let go of the fixation you had, and they let me do it how I wanted to do it. That’s the quintessential thing I want from videogames and the fact that Cairn gave that to me made me adore it so much and I have already plugged the game to multiple friends as a game they would like and totally should play (especially to my friend that actively is a rock climber). I mean, look at these difficulty settings:
They allow you as the player to decide how tough and realistic of an experience you want instead of forcing everyone into the most exhausting version. Then, look at these accessibility settings characterized as the Assist Mode (à la Celeste):
The Game Bakers obviously put the player experience first and show they want people to play their game, to learn how to overcome Aava’s mountain and work towards overcoming their own. TGB have made a game that is a labor of love that they want as many people as possible to play and I respect the hell out of them for that.
The story is also rather interesting, which I wasn’t expecting. Playing Aava as she continues to ignore all of her responsibilities was something I deeply related to as someone who plays games to avoid my real life responsibilities like doing the dishes, laundry, or working on my game. You hear, over most of the game, different people from Aava’s life call her and leave messages where they express their frustration or their sadness over what she’s doing. They are obviously dealing with the grief of having a friend get so stuck on a fixation that they’re driving everyone away from them. Plus with the character Marco, the teenager who is climbing Kami by himself (don’t tell his parents), also being there as a foil to Aava’s relentless push to climb the mountain even when continuing almost guarantees death it allows for some great character work that helps you to really tell how hard it is to both be the person stuck on a fixation and the people around that same person. It’s a beautiful and timeless story and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
The art style is also beautiful. The game is able to convey the important bits of the cliffs you climb on while also being able to make the cliffs in the art style and aren’t too detailed to feel out of place. Slowly going up Kami, seeing the sky change, an Aurora appear, storms come and go, and stars shine bright is a beautiful experience and I adored it. Look at this picture I took earlier in the game with the absolutely fantastic photo mode (which all of my screenshots were taken using because I love that shit):
Just beautiful and I loved seeing the game change and the green parts of the scenery disappear and the ruins of the former Kami residents start to show up and the snow be introduced and the ice appear and all that during the course of the game. Very well made.
The core of the gameplay is, of course, climbing and the game has some jank but manages to handle it rather well. Often I would find myself accidentally using the right leg to go left and vice versa and while this would not at all be possible in the real world it was perfectly possible and really helped the game feel smoother. You’ll frequently come to moments where Aava slips or loses her grip because you either didn’t place your feet on ledges or holds that exist or they were too small for those and lead to Aava being in pain. There are pain killers and food and chalk that can help you grip better, be in pain less, and just all in all do better at climbing. Plus you can quickly place Pitons which allow you to hang for a moment and catch Aava’s breath. These Pitons also mean that you can fall and just end up being caught by the rope connection to the piton which is great because at least you don’t fall to the ground. Of course if you have the rewind assist setting active then the moment you fall you can just rewind back to just before the fall and continue climbing. Which is also infinite so you can use it to just keep climbing without dying at all. Yes, this is usually how I did that because I am cheap and don’t like having to redo so so so much climbing progress with how high some of these cliffs are. The mountains are also very well crafted and feel like there are real handholds and areas that allow you to climb easy peasy and areas that are super duper difficult and it’s just very well put together and feels rather realistic.
There were multiple times later in the game during ice climbing when I just didn’t know why Aava was having issues. Her grip was solid, I didn’t have survival stuff turned on, the ice climbing picks and shoe spikes were shoved in as hard as I could, I was using chalk, I was pausing so she could catch her breath, I would shake my arms to recover, and even better, I had a bunch of effects activated from food which were supposed to help me. Yet still, until I placed a Piton, Aava was struggling a bunch consistently back to back. It made little sense and was likely just me missing something but it was still bothersome.
If you, dear reader, have read some of my other reviews you will have realized how much I absolutely despise forced slow walking for prolonged periods. Well, Cairn is, largely, free from that (which i didn’t realize for too far into the game until I had a popup tell me that RB was fast walk). Except for one of the endings. For around 45 minutes you are forced to walk super slowly. And if you try to move just a little faster with the speed walking then Aava says “Not...too...fast” or something similar while catching her breath. I get why this is a thing, it contextually makes sense and does enhance the feel of the tension, but I still just...I hate slow walking. And for it to be for such a long period of time and only be broken up by climbing just absolutely sucks. That said, I’m putting this in the Meh section, not the bad, because it is quite frankly a me thing that I hate, not a knock on the game itself.
The endings (yes, plural) to Cairn were either heartwarming and bittersweet or rather fucking sad and emotional. I got both during my playthrough and both had their own merits, although I prefer the heartwarming one. Personally, I felt like the game lead up much better to that one, it started to show actual growth in Aava, while the other one shows that no matter what she’s still who she’s always been. That said, both of these endings have a payoff to the themes of the game and of Aava’s character and her story and the story of other past climbers of the mountain. I just have a preference. Overall, the endings were good and I felt like they were satisfying, just in their own different ways.
Cairn is a magical experience of a game. It’s not that long, my first playthrough took about 7 hours, and then I played another 3 of another playthrough to get some extra things I missed on my first and to get some better screenshots to show you, dear reader, in this review. The game sticks with you though, it makes you think like Aava about how to overcome a mountain, about how focusing on the mountain is often the only thing you can think about even when it pulls you away from those you love most. Cairn is a game that isn’t just something that you can play it’s something that you can experience.
I highly recommend grabbing Cairn and giving it a thorough playthrough. It’s usually 30 bucks which I think is a decent price but if you manage to find it on sale for closer to 20 then you are in for a treat that is worth it at that price 10 times over. I just think you need to go in and be willing to turn some aspects of the game off if you don’t like them, or focus on them more than me. I know that if I hadn’t been able to turn off the survival mechanics then I wouldn’t have had as much of a fun time so you should be willing to find the experience that fits best for you. After all, we all have our own mountain and we all deal with that in our own unique ways.
Meow,
Cat
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