Cairn Review: Moving a Mountain

There are a few people in the world whose lives take place on the extremities of ordinary human experience. The vast majority of us work jobs and ignore emails. We look at traffic signs and try and get to 10,000 steps a day. We complain about the weak Wi-Fi signal and make plans for Friday evenings. The rest, a minority so small they might as well not count, do other things. They explore the deepest depths of oceans and wave a muleta in front of a charging bull. They jump off planes and surf giant waves. They climb mountains.

But they do count. The tendencies of this rare strain of people stretch the human experience like a rubber band, even at the risk of snapping. They find new physiological and psychological frontiers; chemical reactions and electrical impulses that happen between free will and fear. Perhaps that's why over six million people tuned in live on Netflix last month to watch one of them climb a building that stretches half a kilometre into the sky without any ropes or safety equipment. And perhaps that's what a little game called Cairn tries to capture.

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Released on PC and PS5 on January 29, Cairn is a game about climbing a mountain. It is a game about grit, patience, and humility. It is also a game about what it means to be a part of that small minority of people who go do things unfathomable to normal people. And Cairn balances all its ideas with the grace of a seasoned climber on a familiar rock face. It is also that rare game that asks players to find their own solutions to problems. There is no blueprint, no markers or guides — there's only the mountain presented as a proverbial Rubik's Cube that you stare at and twist and turn until you solve the puzzle.

There has been a spate of recent games that explore movement as a mechanic, the so-called “walking simulators” that are outwardly presented as games about taking a hike, about climbing mountains. Death Stranding and its sequel asked you to cross rivers and mountains and cliffsides to deliver packages in a post-apocalyptic world. Peak, the 2025 indie co-op game, was about the pleasures of climbing a mountain with a friend, while Don't Nod's Jusant, released in 2023, considered the ascent as a solitary experience. Last year's Baby Steps made a farce of it.

Cairn is a game about climbing a mountain
Photo Credit: The Game Bakers/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

But Cairn is perhaps the most earnest take on the endeavour. It's an exceptional rock-climbing simulator that replicates the repetition and rigour required to find the best routes on a punishing cliffside. And it's also an evocative exploration of the desires that drive humans to cross oceans, conquer mountains, and tame the elements. Cairn presents both freedom and purpose on equal footing, letting you decide whether to pursue the summit single-mindedly, or to explore caves and crevasses along the way.

That journey is told through Aava, a professional climber intent on completing the ascent of Mount Kami, a mythical mountain whose summit has never been reached before. Cairn doesn't spend any time expanding on Aava's backstory or explaining her obsession to conquer Kami. Instead, over the course of the climb, you slowly understand her disposition. Aava is reluctant to form human connections and never betrays her emotions. Her mind is fixated on Kami's summit and the next handhold she can trust on the rock face she's climbing. But as the game progresses and you slowly but surely ascend the mountain, Aava becomes a vessel for your sentiments.

Aava's ascent becomes yours in Cairn
Photo Credit: The Game Bakers/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

Her only constant companion during the climb is Climbot, a cute quadruped robot that acts as her belayer and buddy on Kami's slopes. Climbot secures Aava to her rope while climbing; picks up planted pitons and recycles broken ones, and composts trash accumulated during the climb to turn into chalk. Every time you reach a significant milestone on the mountain, the Climbot also chimes with messages received from Aava's friends. Whether it's pleas from her agent asking her to respond or calls from her partner expressing concern, she never responds. It's her silence that tells the story of Cairn.

On her slow ascent towards the summit, Aava also meets other climbers eager to reach the summit. She is evasive in her interactions with them and mostly prefers to continue climbing in solitude. Aava is more reflective when she stumbles upon remains of people from failed past expeditions on Kami, often finding messages expressing regret or fulfilment, or provisions that help her in her climb. Kami was also home to a long-lost civilisation of cave dwellers — Troglodytes, who carved out intricate settlements in the mountain. Passing through these now vacant villages and picking up stories left behind by settlers becomes Aava's periodic respite on an otherwise mostly vertical, lonely journey.

Aava meets other climbers on Kami, but is reluctant to form connections
Photo Credit: The Game Bakers/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

Cairn also nails the balance of difficulty on the rock face. Climbing Kami can be incredibly punishing, but reaching the top of a flat slab of rock is equally rewarding. In the game, you're handed individual control of each of Aava's limb as you search for the next crack, bump, or fold in the rock face to secure your position. Cairn automatically selects the next limb you need to move to go further up, but you can override and manually control arms and legs and decide your next handhold or step.

Perhaps the most crucial part of Cairn's gameplay doesn't even require you to press a single button. Instead, you must use your eyes keenly and read the rock face standing in front of Aava. When you're on the ground staring at the next segment of the wall you have to climb, you can zoom out and glide the camera along the surface of the granite looking for the best route. Each segment of the climb has multiple routes of varying degrees of difficulty. Some push you further up in your ascent to the summit; others are detours that lead to long hidden secrets of the mountain. And it's up to you to pick your route. You could shoot for Kami's summit without any distractions, or you could look for lost caves on the mountain where you may discover a useful gear or trinket, or slowly unfold stories left behind by those who came before.

There are several routes to the top, but some take you to tucked away secrets
Photo Credit: The Game Bakers/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

Climbing on Kami is treacherous. One wrong move, and you can wipe out significant progress on the rock face. It's not only about finding a hold you can trust, but also about adjusting Aava's posture, managing her stamina, and gauging her exertion. When in a stressful position, Aava's limbs will start to tremble and her breath will quicken, giving you a visual indicator that she is going to fall. You can regain a bit of her stamina by shaking off a limb and finding a more stable position on the rock face.

The precise animations of Aava's movement and intuitive visual cues will help you gauge the stability of the holds. Her hands will convincingly curl over a thick ledge, and her toes will slip into cracks, letting you know that she's okay on this particular part of the rock. And slowly, you must keep moving towards the next position, the next hold that you can trust with your life. Cairn distinguishes itself with gameplay that actively engages your senses rather than just your hands on the controller.

Reading the rock face is essential to finding the right hold
Photo Credit: The Game Bakers/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

You aren't completely without assistance on the rock. As every pro climber, Aava carries chalk that increases her grip on the granite, and pitons that catch her when she falls. Both, however, are in limited supply and can only be replenished over time. Climbot acts as your belayer on the mountain, and you can belay off a piton during a particularly difficult stretch of the rock face to regain your stamina and composure. But the rush of climbing free solo on a difficult and highly technical terrain often pushed me to go as far as I could without the safety net of protective gear. That did mean that I often fell and lost progress, but climbing a tricky segment without putting down a piton gave me a sense of accomplishment I have not felt in games in a while.

Cairn is also a survival game. At all points on the mountain, you must watch your hunger, thirst, and temperature levels. You can find and cook provisions in your bivouac, which also act as periodic save points on the Kami — like the bonfire in Dark Souls. If you go exploring Kami's secrets, you'll also find lost recipes that grant you additional buffs when climbing. Soon, you'll fill up your backpack with food, water, medicine, and resources, and you'll find yourself well-stocked for difficult sections ahead. On the rock face, extra grip and grit or a boost of speed could be the difference between life and death.

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You can cook food or make coffee in your bivouac
Photo Credit: The Game Bakers/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

At the soul of Cairn's experience is the mountain itself. The Game Bakers, the independent developers behind the game, have compared Mount Kami with a boss fight. And they're right. But the mountain is so much more, too. It's also an invitation. Kami is fully explorable: you can go anywhere; climb any rock face, and rappel down a cliffside to find a hidden cave. You can catch fish in a mountain lake; find a love letter on the remains of an alpinist, and sit and watch the sparkling, psychedelic night sky. Cairn shines an ephemeral light on such moments, careful not to underline your experience — as if the game, too, wants to leave you alone on the mountain.

Cairn is beautiful to look at, too. Kami is full of vistas that halt you in your tracks, and the game's colourful, cell-shaded art style comes alive when the sun explodes on the horizon or when night is painted over by auroras. The game's excellent soundtrack that scores Aava's ascent, not only pushes you forward, but also compels you to stop, look, and listen.

But Cairn's technical performance on the PS5 mars the serenity of your climb. The game comes with an uncapped framerate on the console, but struggles for consistency. It rarely hits 60fps and drops frames when you're facing Kami. As a result, the experience is full of stutters and lacks the smoothness you'd expect from an independent game on a current-gen console. A few visual glitches and gameplay inconsistencies are also present, but they're rare. For instance, sometimes Aava's limbs will refuse to stick to a hold on the rock face, even though it's clearly there. And sometimes, you'll see her at the verge of falling, even though you've positioned all four limbs on holds that look secure.

Cairn often compels you to stop, sit, and look at its vistas
Photo Credit: The Game Bakers/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

These, however, I feel, are minor gripes in the face of Cairn's accomplishments. The game's quiet, contemplative, and deliberate gameplay is in a perfect marriage with its themes and ideas. Cairn urges you to explore the mountain, but it also suggests you interrogate within. And with every hand hold, every slip on the rock face, every hot meal in your camp, Aava's ascent becomes yours, too.

In a way, this indie survival-adventure rock-climbing sim is a reminder of an era of games that posed themselves as problems and tasked you to find the solutions on your own. No guides or hints or markers. No button input that lights up the environment, pointing a finger at what you must do next. Cairn instead trusts you to find your way around. And when you do, you feel on top of the world.