REVIEW: ‘Cairn’ Is A Beautifully Engaging Journey

Cairn is the latest survival climbing game from developer The Game Bakers. It is an immensely beautiful, engaging, entertaining, and inspiring game that presents several intricate gameplay mechanics that make for an unforgettable experience.

The game follows Aava, a renowned pro climber who’s taken on several challenges and daunting mountains. This time, she has her sights on the summit of Mount Kami, a dangerous goal none has ever achieved. Aava is ambitious, focused, and resilient. Throughout the game, we get brief cut scenes and glimpses into her life and persona as a climber. She doesn’t care about fame, fortune, or glory; she only cares about climbing, even if she has to sacrifice the connections and bonds she has with the people she left behind to remain on this path.

Throughout the game, players meet several characters and learn about the mountain’s history and Aava’s relationships back home. Cairn seamlessly blends Aava’s story with gameplay, with every narrative element and revelation coming after a daunting climb. Despite not being fully narrative-focused, Cairn‘s plot is incredibly interesting, especially from the lens of its peculiar protagonist.

Cairn’s gameplay is simple in concept but incredibly intricate in practice.

The gameplay, however, is its best aspect. Cairn‘s gameplay is simple in concept but incredibly intricate in practice. With a backpack filled with limited supplies and a loyal climbing robot, players take on Mount Kami right from the bottom. Climbing is incredibly physics-based as players move each limb to grab a hold, correct their posture, manage their stamina, ensure a limb isn’t too stressed, shaky, or in an awkward position, avoid slipping when climbing over waterfalls, and take note of the wind, or they will fall. Each fall can be deadly, especially when playing in any mode that isn’t the easiest.

Aava carries pitons that players can place anywhere on a wall to prevent them from losing progress on a climb, especially during particularly challenging sections. These pitons are self-drilling and can even be recovered as long as you complete the minigame of placing them perfectly and remember to recover them with Aava’s robot.

However, avoiding a deadly fall with accurate climbing is just one of the many things players have to worry about when climbing, as Cairn is also a survival game. As such, it has several other mechanics that are equally as intricate. While climbing, players can monitor Aava’s health bar. Aside from falling, other factors such as thirst, hunger, and temperature affect how successful a climb will be. If any of these elements are neglected, Aava will pass out during a climb, and each second after that brings her closer to death. It’s also worth noting that save points are limited in the game, so players will lose a lot of progress depending on where and when they die.

Players who explore Mount Kami are rewarded with not just critical items but also narrative details.

To avoid this, players must cook, forage, scavenge for food and other items, collect water whenever they can, and seek shelter when the weather is bad. On their ascent, players will occasionally find camping spots where they can save, rest, cook, sort their inventory, and wrap Aava’s bloodied and beaten fingers. The cooking mechanic lets players combine several consumable items and foods to get stronger items or full-blown meals with stat bonuses.

These range from better grip and focus, which gives you more stamina, to Grit, which negates every stat debuff like hunger and thirst for a limited time. Cooking is incredibly fun and rewarding, as the game rewards players for creating questionable concoctions like trout and beer, which oddly gives significant stat boosts.

Cairn also rewards players who explore Mount Kami to its fullest with not just critical items but also narrative details. The mountain’s trail features many interesting locations, from several little hidden buildings to abandoned but beautiful fishing spots, including one in a cave. One of the most interesting places players can encounter is a cave that looks like a massive rave that happened a few minutes ago, with music still playing, despite being completely abandoned.

Visually, Cairn is quite unique.

What’s even cooler about this cave is that the music being played is a rave version of one of the best songs from the developer’s previous game, Furi. Plus, if you happen to mess up and fall into a nearby gap, you’ll find a corpse holding a great item, but then you’ll have to climb your way out of the hole. Players also find keepsakes, notes, and climbing robots left behind by other climbers who abandoned their journey or died along the way. Moments like these make the game incredibly engaging and memorable, and exploring the mountain immensely rewarding.

However, Cairn has its share of faults. For one, visibility is pretty bad at night and sometimes during the day, even with the lamp attached to Aava’s backpack. This is especially an issue as some holds are tiny and hard to miss, specifically during the tougher parts of the game.

Aava also cannot run for more than two seconds before becoming tired, which sucks if you’re trying to get to the next area quickly. Performance-wise, the game runs really well for the most part, aside from occasional audio cuts. It’s also worth noting that the game caused a PC crash during initial setup, but it seemed to be an isolated issue that didn’t occur again.

Visually, Cairn is quite unique. It sports an intricate cell-shaded art style and aesthetic, and fantastic art directions, specifically its picturesque mountainside, flora, fauna, buildings, and natural interiors. Its soundtrack is also amazing, and the combination of its great music and art direction made for a highly memorable title drop.

Overall, though not without its few faults, Cairn is an excellently crafted and engaging climbing game that will keep players entertained and immersed from start to finish. It’s a game that doesn’t overstay its welcome but remains memorable regardless.