Terra: The Earth Spirit

Dive into Yahtzee's review of Cairn, the realistic climbing simulator. Learn about its nuanced gameplay, challenging mechanics, and rewarding ascent.

This week on Fully Rambomatic, Yahtzee reviewed Cairn.

So my colleagues recommended I check out Cairn (pronouncing it as "Karen"), and I was like, "What's that, then? A game about going on a quest to your local Starbucks to demand to speak to the manager?" Then I realized they were trying to say "cairn", as in a pile of stones, and Americans have much the same relationship with the "R" consonant in the middle of words as they do with competent governance. And I'm pleased to report that Cairn is one of those pleasant surprises that are occasionally thrown out to alleviate the January chill, like a single sheltering tree on a stormy plain, or a convenient dining room table to hide under when Dad's been on red wine again.

I was cautiously intrigued to see that it's going for realistic climbing gameplay; as an indoor rock climber, I'm still waiting for the game that accurately captures all the joy and excitement of cleaning chalk dust out of my finger scabs. But my intrigue increased when I saw it was made by The Game Bakers, developers of _Furi_ and _Haven_, two games that were broadly good under-radar flyers powered by imagination and artistry, but weren't quite the real breakout hits I'm waiting for from them, you know? Maybe that starts with coming up with a better name than "The Game Bakers"; it's a bit quaint, isn't it? It's what you call yourself if you make cutesy restaurant management games for sexually frustrated stay-at-home parents. So here's a game fresh from the oven of those wholesome apple-cheeked Game Bakers, about a possibly mentally ill woman screaming and smashing her face against rocks for ten hours.

Cairn follows Aava, a professional climber tackling a famous mountain that has claimed the life of everyone who's ever tried, but she's determined to be the first, and what's more, the first to do it while dressed in a partial Egyptian mummy costume. It didn't take long to conclude that I didn't like Aava much; she's got a case of the "have to"s that would make Reboot Lara Croft stage an intervention, and every time she gets a voicemail from her manager politely asking her for the merest progress update, or from her worrisome girlfriend telling her the cat's about to die, she fucking rolls her eyes. "Cuh! Bloody nice people! Where do they get off being so concerned for my future and safety? Don't they understand how important it is not to distract me from my quest to stand on top of a rock?"

But Aava's motives are intentionally questionable; the plot's a sort of counterpoint to that of _Celeste)_, saying, "Yes, climbing a huge mountain probably will boost your self-worth, but let's not lose sight of the fact that odds are good you'll completely alienate yourself and die." Right before the final ascent, the game even asks, "Look, do you actually want to press on to the summit and risk almost certain death, or do you want to pack it in and go home?" And much as that would definitely be the smarter choice from Aava's perspective, apparently, you guys aren't familiar with the term "anticlimax", or indeed, the term "video game". "Can't you see I have to risk everything for the summit? There might be a colectible there!"

And as we move on to discussing the gameplay, allow me to slam the positive pregnancy test onto the metaphorical coffee table surrounded by gossipy female relatives: Cairn is probably the most nuanced and authentic-feeling climbing simulator I've ever played. Gasp, murmuring, and "Did you have to drop that so violently? You almost spilled my latte." How it works is, when attached to the wall, you freely move Aava's hands and feet individually, and try to make sure each one has found some kind of handhold or foothold before moving on to the next. Which sounds straightforward, but you'd be surprised how fucking unforgiving it gets; it's very much the _Dark Souls_ of cli-- I've just decided not to finish that sentence, lest my entire respiratory system hurl itself out of my mouth and be left dangling there like a set of wet pink bagpipes.

The difficulty partly comes from the game being bad at explaining stuff. I practically reached the endgame before I figured out how to turn my flashlight on; up until then, whenever darkness fell, I just had to pitch my tent and sleep comfortably through the night, like a fucking sucker. And it's not always clear if your handholds are secure; between dodgy collision and our view being blocked by Aava's big fat arse, you can't always be sure your hands are gripping the wall or merely offering the mountain a reassuring stroke. You only figure it out when Aava's legs start wobbling and she makes noises like a guinea pig panicking about losing its asthma inhaler.

There's an algorithm that's supposed to automatically select whichever hand and foot most needs to be repositioned, but it falls short in panicky moments, when you're desperately doggy-paddling the cliff face with your feet supported by nothing by hope and self-delusion. Then you fall, then you die. But the uncertainty is what makes it feel authentic; in real-life climbing, you're not always certain your weight will be supported by the single aroused nipple you hold between thumb and forefinger. It motivates you to keep your head in the game and make sure to use your pitons, so after failures, you're merely left dangling humiliated like a baby in a jumper, as opposed to being reduced to a bloody skidmark in the underpants of Mother Nature.

Cairn's apparent simplicity is deceptive; there must be some very complicated physics at work behind the scenes. That's probably why it glitches out so much; Aava's limbs tend to twist around and clip into each other in slightly alarming ways. Sometimes, there's a collision conflict, and she'll mysteriously teleport six feet to the left. But hey, maybe all of that's her secret superpower that enabled her to become a famous mountaineer, 'cos it's certainly not her survival skills that did that. There is a survival element wherein we have a limited inventory for supplies to manage our hunger, thirst, and grip, and apparently, Aava is the kind of professional adventurer who embarks on lengthy dangerous expeditions with two bars of Dairy Milk and a sippy cup. But that incentivizes fully exploring the environment, discovering the ruins of the civilization that apparently couldn't think of any downsides or impracticalities to living on the side of a fucking wall halfway to space, and searching their abandoned homes for fresh water, herbs, berries, and er... packets of instant mashed potato, which I suppose they bought at the ancient mountaintop Whole Foods.

But put the questionably motivated protagonist, nice background storytelling, glitchy physics, intuitive challenging movement system that rewards mastery and forethought, and everything else I just mentioned to one side. What I like about rock climbing as a solo sport is that it's intrinsically goal-oriented; it's not like running on a treadmill until you can't be arsed to run on the treadmill anymore. You're trying to get to the top to achieve something; that's what makes it rewarding. And that's why when playing Cairn, no matter how many times I fell, failed, slipped to bounce down a rocky slope like a Stretch Armstrong in a tumble dryer, and got sent back to the last of the slightly piss-takingly far-apart save-points, I never stopped feeling that fiery urge to stuff my fingers back into the slits and resume frigging the living daylights out of this mountain. And the ending very much paid it all off, after which, the game has this neat feature where you can take the camera around the mountain and go over the entire route you took, reminiscing about every tricky jump, smiling at that dense cluster of skull icons where you were convinced that overhang wasn't as steep as it looked, and I found it oddly gratifying; it let me see how far I'd come. When I started this, I was obliviously slouched across my office sofa, and now... erm... Well, at one point, I shifted to the other bumcheek.

Addenda

• Has the correct number of bum cheeks: Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw
• I'd get back into climbing but the kids aren't old enough to join in and not young enough that I can fit them in a backpack