Cairn review: 2026 has already peaked with this spellbinding climbing game

If you liked the idea of Death Stranding’s long, meditative walks but found it all a bit horizontal for your liking, your day has come. Cairn is the latest in what’s turning out to be a surprisingly well-populated ‘people going on long, tricky journeys’ sub-genre whose recent highlights also include Baby Steps, and to cut to the chase, it’s the very best of them.

As the famous climber Aava, yours is a straightforward ambition. You want to reach the summit of Mount Kami, a peak so formidable that nobody’s ever been up there before. In order to reach this lofty goal, you’ll scale rock surfaces using a climbing system that has you moving each limb, one by one, managing your stamina, and hammering in pitons to attach your guide ropes to.

Developer The Game Bakers hits just the right amount of realism here. Aava is capable of lower body contortions and precarious grips that would have Nathan Drake peering out with his hands over his eyes, but the process of moving upwards never feels so far-fetched that it becomes slapstick, and the threat of falling always feels real skin-tighteningly real.

Layered on top of that brilliant climbing system, which you’ll spend most of your time mastering, is a survival element. It’s this that really discerns Cairn, because when you’re hunkered down in a tent making a hot chocolate for yourself over a camping stove using rations you’ve salvaged out in the world, you really feel like you’re on an adventure. One that’s specific to you, too. The routes you’ve picked up different sections of the mountain. The items you’ve found. The places you’ve decided to set up camp. It’s cosy, in that same rosy-cheeked way that Zelda: Breath of the Wild is when you start up a campfire and prepare some stat-boosting kebabs ahead of tomorrow’s big battle. Only in this case, the battle is with mother nature.

How refreshing it is to find a game that’s so confident in the enjoyment you’ll have in those few elements done well. There aren’t journal entries or bobble hats scattered over the mountain like busywork confetti (Ubisoft open worlds, looking at you), and what little narrative there is is dealt out so sparingly that nobody would keep going just to resolve the plot arc. Cairn knows it’s built a physics-based climbing system that’s compelling enough to keep your attention for hours, and a survival layer on top of it that’s balanced on a knife edge between exhilarating and punishing. And, like protagonist Aava herself, in its self-assuredness it knows it doesn’t have to say anything else.

Excuses not to play it? Maybe it sounds a bit slow. Maybe the climbing sounds tricky when you’re starting out. Maybe this doesn’t seem like the sort of game you’d get much out of in a few stolen minutes that you manage to snatch, in between boring adult responsibilities like avoiding homelessness and keeping children alive. Of those, only the last point carries any weight.

Although the atmosphere is meditative, it’s also well-paced enough to trot you along from introductory tutorial to vast mountain in a matter of minutes, and in that time you will already have a feel for where to place your limbs to avoid falling. Your arms and legs start to shake when your stamina drops low, your heartbeat becomes more audible and the screen starts to do that ‘You’re about to die in Call Of Duty’ effect where the FOV stretches and the colours go runny. You’ll grasp that in ten minutes. And then spend ten hours testing its limits, pushing your luck and choosing increasingly ambitious routes up the next section of rock face.

Survival items are a bit thin on the ground, mind you. It’s a bitter pill to swallow to make your way up a particularly challenging section, and then find that there’s neither adequate food or a place to camp nearby when you next hit a flat surface. It’s trying to keep you in that ‘I’m just barely surviving, against the odds’ zone, but now and then it’s too Draconian about it and, well, you’re not surviving anymore.

There are moments when the current games industry feels out of ideas, particularly if you stay within the confines of big-budget, multi-instalment franchises. Games like Cairn are the counterargument. It’s so confident in the thrill of its premise and the quality of its mechanics that it can simply arm you with the tools to explore it and trust that you’ll carve out a great adventure for yourself. Games like this are what will save us from the current rut. Grab hold, and let it elevate you.