A climber clutches on to a vertiginous rock face, toes digging in, knuckles turning white, a limb trembling from the sheer strain. In this precarious moment, a few options present themselves: move swiftly to rebalance, take a few seconds to rest, or simply let go – praying that the belay holds the weight of a body that has succumbed to the massif.
Cairn, the new "survival climbing game" from French studio The Game Bakers, is full of such dicey, panicked moments. There is no visible stamina bar, which means that the player must glean all their information from the state of their playable alpinist, Aava. Under acute duress, Aava’s breathing will intensify, becoming quicker and shallower, and her body will begin to tremble. "We want you to focus on her posture and on the handholds in front of you," creative director Emeric Thoa says.
Beneath this naturalistic presentation lies an avalanche of mathematical calculations. You direct Aava’s body and all of her limbs using only the left analogue stick, confirming a hand or foothold with a single button press. Simple enough, yet Cairn is computing in real time the stress that Aava’s limbs and core are under. This dictates the most physically realistic next move for her. "The limb is chosen by the system automatically. It predicts what arm or leg is willing to move in a smooth and easy way," explains Thoa. "The challenge for the player is in maintaining Aava’s balance."
Such dynamic scrambling is a far cry from either the automated parkour of Assassin’s Creed, which requires the player only to hold a trigger to stick to a stone wall, or the navigational puzzle-solving of recent climbing hit, Jusant, which saw players latching on to mineral outcrops on a prescribed path up a mountain. Cairn presents a more involved take on the most dizzying of pursuits, pairing its freeform control system with a meticulously designed mountain, whose crisscrossing routes not even Thoa and his colleagues know in their totality.
"I know we are in the year 2024 ... but we are designing and making this mountain entirely by hand, placing every single rock, crack and handhold," Thoa says. "It’s really a lot of work – very repetitive – and I’m so grateful to our level design team."
Cairn will arrive with multiple game modes. The story sees Aava tackling a single mountain over a gruelling multi-day ascent, and there is also an expedition mode that includes additional mountains and challenges. You can "free solo", for those who wish to forgo the safety of ropes. "This is where the fun really begins," Thoa says with a devilish twinkle, confirming that in Cairn, unlike Jusant, "you absolutely will die".
Cairn aims to convey what "climbing and alpinism actually is," he says. "Try and fall; retry and fall; and then when you manage to climb, it’s super-satisfying."
