Mountain climbing is serious business, especially for those who choose to do it alone. That's what you'll be doing in Cairn. Unlike the fantastical (but excellent) Jusant, there will be no magical creatures along the way to give you moving handholds and the ability to leap huge distances vertically. No vines to hold onto that shoot upward; no plants to sprout climbable buds onto sheer surfaces. It's just you, uncaring rocky heights, a limited amount of gear, and your wits.
"Climbing is fun because it has instinctive success and failure consequences," says creative director Emeric Thoa. "Succeed and you'll make visible progress towards your destination, fail and you'll fall down and lose progress, because of gravity. So climbing is in itself a game, with rules everybody knows. That's one of the reasons we wanted to make Cairn, a game where you climb a mountain. The pitch is very simple: 'reach a summit no one reached before', and it is aligned with what you do in the game. Your objective is visually on screen, without any artifice. It's simple, but because we created a completely new way to climb, it's deep and unique."
