Cairn

Cairns have different meanings across various cultures, with the stone mounds sometimes being used as navigational landmarks, memorials for the dead, or as a reflection on spirituality and the journey of life, among other symbolic uses. In Cairn, the video game, these rock piles are pervasive, both literally and metaphorically. Aava, the protagonist, sets out on a personal journey to climb Mount Kami, itself conspicuously shaped like a Cairn, but is the climb worth the pain? For some people, yes, but Cairn is a tough game to wholesale recommend.

In total, I climbed Kami for 14 days (the equivalent of 12 hours in game), fell 168 times, and died nine times. Most of those falls was a significant setback in my progress, and each death meant I was starting over from my last camp site. That’s an average of 14 falls and nearly one death per gameplay hour. To put it bluntly, Cairn is one of the most frustrating games that I’ve ever played, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something compelling about it.

I won’t say that Cairn is the Dark Souls of mountain climbing games, but it certainly has a similar dynamic in that it pushes you away out of frustration and then pulls you back in with the dopamine high of success. However, by the end of my journey, I did not feel fulfilled, instead feeling only relief that it was over. Though I am wondering if that was the intent from the developers all along, one way or the other.

Cairn does have three difficulty modes: Explorer, Alpinist, and Free Solo, as well as several gameplay assists that can be toggled on and off to make things easier. I played on the default Alpinist mode for the intended experience. It’s enough of a challenge that I occasionally had to walk away from it and come back after a frustrating fall or death. And of course, there were times I was being stupid or cocky, which led to a mistake.

I nearly hit my breaking point about halfway through the game when a massive difficulty spike was introduced in the form of a rockface that I’m estimating was three or four times the size of anything I had climbed previously. With no locations to stop and set up Aava’s tent between the bottom and the top, it is a true test of skill, and I failed miserably. With only six pitons – anchors that screw into the rock – at my disposal, the rain causing me to lose grip constantly, the wind threatening to blow me off the mountain, and starvation setting in, I was unable to conquer this part of the climb of my own volition. I needed to turn on some gameplay assists, and I’m not ashamed to admit it because I know I won’t be the only one. In fact, I bet some players will quit the game outright, and perhaps that’s the point. No one has ever reached the summit of Kami, and for good reason.

Around this same time, Aava receives a message from Naomi, her significant other, asking why she is climbing this “big stupid rock.” Aava retorts only to herself that Naomi doesn’t get it. I was starting to not get it either, to be honest. Which leads me to another issue I have with Cairn: Aava is an insufferable protagonist. Blinded by her obsession to reach the top of Kami, chasing a cathartic moment of bliss, she disregards herself, her friends and loved ones, and some of the quirky characters she meets along the way. Frankly, she seems hell bent on dying in an “I’m going to climb this mountain or die trying” sort of way. Without spoiling any of the narrative, she comes across as someone who gets no enjoyment from everyday life or the people in it. The thought of reaching the top of Kami is her sole objective. Is she depressed? Suicidal? An egotist? A masochist? Perhaps she is all of them, but there’s nothing particularly endearing about her as a character.

For Aava, Kami is her Moby Dick, her destructive obsession that she is willing to risk life and limb for. All who have come before her have either turned back or died trying, but she is undeterred. Despite Aava possessing a sense of reckless abandon, measuring risk is a primary theme of Cairn, with each movement possibly being the one that undoes a long stretch of precise and arduous rock climbing. I often had the urge to take a detour to a point of interest off the beaten path or attempt a more direct route to the next landing spot, and sometimes I acted on those inclinations, but often I just played it safe, not wanting to have to redo long or difficult stretches of climbing. Yet I still fell 168 times and died nine times.

For a game this challenging, Cairn is surprisingly easy to pick up and play. On PlayStation, you control one limb at a time using the left stick and press Square to place it. The appropriate limb is auto selected for you based on Aava’s position and posture, but it’s not always right. For those times, you can hold R1 to manually select the limb you want to move. Climbing is somewhat physics based, so, stretching too much or twisting yourself up like a pretzel is going to quickly deplete your stamina, eventually leading to a slip and fall. Again, if you aren’t anchored to a piton, that slip and fall likely means you’ve just become a memorial Cairn on Kami.

It's best to take your time (or at least as much time as you can) while climbing, identifying proper hand- and footholds that can sustain you. You’re looking for ledges, crevices, cracks, or small lips on the rock face to latch onto for a moment before the next movement. Having a high foothold allows you to stretch to reach a handhold that may be just out of reach, as well. Pressing L1 lets you zoom out to survey the path ahead of you, and it is wise to do that often. I was constantly plotting my route, as to avoid a potential death trap that I could not work myself out of. You can easily back yourself into a corner that you can’t climb out of if you aren’t paying attention, which likely means you’re starting back at the last save point, or dropping down to your last piton and attempting that section once more.

Let’s talk about pitons for a moment. I cannot say this strongly enough: pitons are your lifeblood in Cairn. Use them often and use them wisely as you can only carry six attached to your backpack (plus any that are in your backpack). These are like mini checkpoints along the way that will not only save you from falling to your death but also save you from snapping your controller in half after a tough fall. Additionally, pitons allow you to go “off belay,” which basically means that you clip into them and hang from the rock face. Going off belay refills your stamina and allows you to get into your backpack for supplies as well. Perfectly placed pitons can be recovered by your "Climbot," an automated worker bot that follows you around, gathering pitons and receiving your calls. Like an administrative assistant for mountain climbers, if you will. I spent the early hours thinking I needed to hoard these up, but I really needed to rely on them more heavily.

I mentioned the backpack, which is a good time to discuss Cairn’s survival mechanics. This is a full-blown survival climbing game, with you having to account for hunger, thirst, body temperature, and health. You’ll have to gather supplies either on the mountain or left behind by previous climbers, and let’s just say that the menu is a little slim. Dandelions, raspberries, dehydrated veggies, oats, and chocolate bars are part of the smorgasbord available for sustenance. Water is essential as well and your canteen which can be filled at any stream or watering hole you come across. But Aava’s backpack can only hold so much, and rather than being based on a weight limit, it’s based on the confines of the physical space within the backpack, which is a neat system.

Interspersed along the mountain are bivouac sites that double as save points and a place to pitch your tent, which allows you to warm up, cook food, tape bloody fingers, and sleep. These locations are finite, and a few are off the beaten path, so you’ll want to take advantage of them every time you find one. Cooking food and drinks can produce items that give Aava temporary buffs to her focus and burst, but I’ll be honest, I couldn’t tell the difference in their effects. I worried more about how they would sate my hunger, thirst, or warm my body temperature.

Despite its generally oppressive themes of solitude, abandonment, and obsession, Cairn’s cel-shaded art style and beautifully haunting music can be a vibe. I took advantage of its rather robust photo mode quite often, including most of the pictures in this review. I wanted there to be more music, but I get that hearing nothing but the wind, rain, and Aava writhing in discomfort adds to the tension of the experience. With that said, I encountered framerate issues, and other graphical glitches somewhat regularly. It took me a while to realize that sometimes it was raining despite not being rendered on screen, and since rain greatly affects Aava’s grip, I started listening for rain more than looking for it. Thankfully, these technical issues should be addressed with a patch.

I feel weird about my time with Cairn. It was infuriating, it was satisfying, and there were a few times I wanted to quit altogether. I couldn’t wait for it to be over, sometimes because I was ready to throw in the towel, and other times because I wanted to see this journey through and reach the summit of Kami. I wish Aava was a better vessel through which to experience this journey, but my gut tells me that I had exactly the type of experience the developer wanted me to have – experiencing the frustrations of failure and the elation of triumph on a seesaw of emotions held together by climbing tape and pitons. Perhaps it is the Dark Souls of climbing games.