In Cairn, almost every person Aava meets as she ascends Mount Kami and every loved one who leaves her messages from back home, all continuously ask the same question: “Why are you attempting this climb?” It’s a question I kept asking myself when another slip cost me many minutes of careful progress, when my backpack was bereft of food and drink, and when I couldn’t see a clear path upwards. We shared the same answer, though. Sheer stubbornness and dogged determination to reach the top of the damn thing.

It’s amazing what innate and primal feelings an ultimately pointless challenge to climb a big mountain can draw out from us. It’s the same push that’s driven people into keyboard-smashing and mouse-crushing rage just to complete Bennett Foddy’s ridiculous climbers GIRP and Getting Over It.

Cairn, the climbing adventure from French-based developers, The Game Bakers, thrives on exactly that same desire to conquer a seemingly insurmountable task. And it fully commits to that idea. Sure, there is a well-written story, some charming characters, and a few other elements thrown in, but this is a game where you’ll spend 15 hours or more carefully and deliberately climbing a mountain – and probably falling a few dozen times, too.

Why do we fall, Bruce?

It starts, though, in a climbing gym. A place that’s very familiar to me, as I’ve been indoor bouldering for over three years now. While there’s a minimal UI and no in-depth tutorial, the controls and the objective are obvious here, with clearly labelled handholds to guide you.

Getting to grips with the controls doesn’t take too long. You simply control one limb at a time, move it to where you want to go within reach, and press a button to set it down in that position, with Aava grasping an edge or planting her foot if possible. I did experience some clipping through the walls and unnatural limb positions, but these glitches seem inevitable when there’s so much freedom to choose your path.

The game automatically picks which limb it feels is best to move each time based on your balance and weight distribution. I found it works well the majority of the time, though it can cause issues in more panicked moments if the wrong body part you didn’t want to move suddenly comes away from the wall and leaves you in trouble. There is an option to choose which specific limb to use manually, which I made the most of when tackling some risky sections, but you shouldn’t need it for every movement.

I do like to think that my climbing experience helped me to understand and work out an approach to some of the game’s problems, especially when I got to exploit some ideas or techniques that I’ve picked up or seen implemented by others. I think that speaks to The Game Baker’s dedication to getting its core climbing mechanics right, that you can find your way through some routes with genuine climbing technique.

This isn’t intended as a boast, but I do wonder how well Cairn will play out to someone with zero experience of or interest in climbing. We are far from the obvious handholds and clearly directed paths of an Uncharted or an Assassin’s Creed game, a further step from the more arcade-y and puzzle-based climbs of Jusant, and not even close to the ludicrousness of a Bennett Foddy-like.

There are maps and guides you can find in some areas of the mountain, but these offer little more than a difficulty gradient and an intended line up increasingly treacherous rock faces of Kam – the specifics of how you follow it are up to you to solve. And you don’t really get feedback on your moves until you’ve made them. Something that may look good could actually put Aava under huge stress, her arms and legs shaking as the camera slowly zooms in to warn you that a fall is imminent unless you change something.

A meditative state

So, Cairn isn’t easy, and the path to the top is littered with reminders of past climbers who have abandoned their ascent, gone missing during a climb, or died attempting the challenge.

And yet, even in the face of all this, Aava and I continue to press on, because it’s so satisfying when everything goes just right. We’re unleashing the same screams of anguish, exclamations of exhaustion, and bursts of expletives every time we fall, but also entering the same meditative state when seeing a wall and unleashing the same roars of triumph after finally nailing a tricky section.

You’re rewarded for exploring areas or routes away from the obvious path as well, with a stunning vista that shows off the clean art style and gives the minimal audio a chance to stand out. You can also find food, items, secrets, and hidden points of interest that help further reveal Aava’s character, the lore of the mountain, and the lives of the community that used to live on it.

What I like most about this is that Cairn plays these straight. There are perhaps elements of mysticism and fantasy at play, but there is no grand reveal or bonkers conspiracy hidden in the mountain; instead, the aim is to simply expand the world, understand Aava better, and have a rest between climbs.

These moments of downtime, when you can set up your bivouac, are also when you need to engage most with the game’s survival elements. Foraging for food, collecting water, maintaining your health, and mending your climbing gear are all important parts to ensure you reach the top.

I could take or leave these distractions, which aren’t too obtrusive but also not massively engaging. Luckily, there’s a toggle to turn them off completely if you’d prefer, as well as a couple of other assist features that offer better fall protection and more auto-saves.

Much like The Game Bakers’ brilliant boss rush gauntlet, Furi, there’s a level of dedication to a singular idea in Cairn that might put off many who don’t gel with the concept. And even I’ll admit that the game’s punishing nature did make me want to give up multiple times – especially in its gruelling final sections.

But it all comes back to that repeated question: why climb the mountain? Well, when I climb, there’s little else quite so satisfying when you flash a route or puzzle a path through a seemingly impossible problem. When it clicks, Cairn offers exactly that, just on a much grander scale, and somewhere where I can experience it without giving up the safety of a comfy crash mat.

Should you play Cairn?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

Cairn offers fully remappable controls and size options for subtitles. Outside of that, the rest of the accessibility features are all to do with adjusting the difficulty of the climbing mechanics and intensity of the game’s survival systems.

With the former, you can switch on more obvious feedback when you grab holds and automatically skip some quick time events. For the latter, you can simply turn features on or off, including the need to eat or drink, the need to stock up and maintain your climbing equipment, the ability to quickly recover from a fall, and add more regular auto-saves.

How I reviewed Cairn

I played Cairn for around 18 hours on a PlayStation 5 Pro on a Samsung S90C OLED TV using a DualSense Wireless Controller. I also played a couple of sessions on the PlayStation Portal, which worked well but was a bit more fiddly than I would have preferred.

Audio was played through a Samsung HW-Q930C soundbar or SteelSeries Arctic Nova 7, which helped pick out the minimal yet effective audio design throughout the game.

While the main game took 15 hours to complete, there are reasons for multiple playthroughs if you want to find more secrets, try different routes, or tackle the terrifying 'free solo' mode, where you can't use pitons.

First reviewed January 2026