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- Joined
- 1 Oct 2009
- Posts
- 1,106
- Location
- Norwich, UK
I just tried the Cairn demo as part of the next fest on Steam, and I couldn't find a thread about it here, it deserves it's own one. The demo took me about 45 minutes to complete and I was extremely impressed. I can instantly tell this is going to be a hit, due out Q1 2026, but I fear it might have been overlooked, the demo has been out 7 months and I only just tried it.
In short it's a singleplayer rock climbing game. In my opinion it blends the technical aspects of climbing with gamified systems very well so it's on the fun side of realistic. You climb controlling individual limbs which at first sounds finicky, but you get the hang on this so fast, it's incredibly intuitive. You have to manage food, and thirst, you have a backpack with supplies you manage. You can camp on plateaus, cook up food, tape up your hands as they wear. You can use chalk for grip and pitons on climbs to save you from falls if you make a mistake. There's a huge amount of freedom, even in the demo there's a lot of routes up, you can turn on replay mode and see other climbers and the routes they took and you see people scattered all over the rockface trying different routes. Even as a demo it's very polished.
I should note that I'm not in to climbing, I don't think you'd need to be to enjoy this, if you're even slightly on the fence grab the demo.
Steam page with demo - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1588550/Cairn/
In short it's a singleplayer rock climbing game. In my opinion it blends the technical aspects of climbing with gamified systems very well so it's on the fun side of realistic. You climb controlling individual limbs which at first sounds finicky, but you get the hang on this so fast, it's incredibly intuitive. You have to manage food, and thirst, you have a backpack with supplies you manage. You can camp on plateaus, cook up food, tape up your hands as they wear. You can use chalk for grip and pitons on climbs to save you from falls if you make a mistake. There's a huge amount of freedom, even in the demo there's a lot of routes up, you can turn on replay mode and see other climbers and the routes they took and you see people scattered all over the rockface trying different routes. Even as a demo it's very polished.
I should note that I'm not in to climbing, I don't think you'd need to be to enjoy this, if you're even slightly on the fence grab the demo.
Steam page with demo - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1588550/Cairn/