Cairn

I came into Cairn expecting a pretty traversal toy. What I got was something closer to a systems puzzle wrapped in a survival sim, dressed up in some of the most striking mountain visuals I have seen on PC. The Game Bakers already had my attention after Furi and Haven, but this is a different beast entirely - slower, more deliberate, and far more demanding of your planning instincts than anything in their back catalog. The core loop is tighter than it first appears. You control Aava limb by limb, manually placing hands and feet on holds while the game's AI suggests which limb to move next based on current strain, surface angle, and friction. That automatic suggestion system works well in simpler sections but breaks down on tricky overhangs, where you will want to override it by manually selecting your next limb yourself. Stamina drains continuously while you hang on the wall, and when it goes critical, Aava starts shaking. Your options at that point are: find a stable rest position, burn a chalk charge for extra grip, or hammer in a piton fast. Pitons are your portable checkpoints - fall while clipped into one and you drop back to that pin rather than the base of the climb. You start with a small supply, can craft more from scrap at bivouac camps, and can hunt down three indestructible troglodyte pitons hidden in guardian statues off the main path. The resource loop around piton scraps, Climbot repairs, and chalk management is genuinely interesting and never feels arbitrary. On top of climbing, you are tracking hunger, thirst, body temperature, and a barometer that signals incoming storms. Rain wets the rock and costs you grip. Night climbs change visibility and temperature. Route-scouting with the L1 zoom-out before committing to a wall is not optional - it is the game. The survival layer is well-integrated rather than bolted on. Foraging for berries, breaking rocks for water, and cooking at camp all feed into buff stacking - certain meals give grip bonuses, others add energy for longer pushes. Timing those buffs correctly before a hard pitch is the kind of low-key decision-making that I find satisfying. The story threads through fully voice-acted cutscenes between ascent sections, delivered via Climbot relaying messages from the people Aava left behind. Fellow climber Marco provides most of the narrative weight, and their back-and-forth digs into why anyone would willingly do something this dangerous. The writing is uneven - some reviewers found Aava difficult to connect with, and that is a fair read - but the thematic material is handled with more care than you would expect from a climbing game. Difficulty is adjustable, and newcomers genuinely should start on a softer setting to learn the limb system before the game starts throwing wet granite and hard brown rock that rejects standard pitons. After story completion, Expedition Mode opens up, letting you run timed climbs as either Aava or Marco in alpine or free-solo style and compare results with other players. Post-launch, The Game Bakers have committed to free content updates under the "On the Trail" banner, with the first pack adding three new locations. The technical side has rough edges - some stability issues and visual clipping have been reported - but the Steam user score has held firm and the devs appear to be patching actively. Controller is strongly recommended over keyboard and mouse for the limb controls to feel right. For the strategy-and-systems crowd: yes, the genre is climbing, but the decision density is real. Every wall is a resource-management problem with a physics layer on top. If that sentence makes your eyes light up, this is your game. Diego, Scout Team

Valve rates this game Steam Deck Verified. Runs great on Linux after minor tweaks. Based on 74 ProtonDB community reports.

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