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Mountain climbing is serious business, especially for those who choose to do it alone.
That’s what you’ll be doing in Cairn.
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.
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.
Your objective is visually on screen, without any artifice.
Climbing rocks!
Or, rather, yourpathswill be.
Falls can take off a significant chunk of health, or even kill you instantly.
Every moment of every climb is a puzzle, often a tense one.
Running out of stamina or losing consciousness before you reach the next summit are real and ever-present dangers.
“This is by far our most challenging production in terms of development complexity,” says Thoa.
And technically it’s very difficult, as all the climbing movements are controlled by maths, not animations.
Each time we improve something, we break something elsewhere.
Overall, any task that would usually take one week to make takes six to twelve times more.
But that’s definitely worth it."
“Every moment of every climb is a puzzle, often a tense one.”
Of course, Cairn won’t be one relentless climb from start to finish.
you’re free to gather resources for food, drink, and piton repair.
Cook food, repair broken pitons, and sleep off any damage to health that you’ve suffered.
The actions you take between climbs are just as important as the actions you take during them.
Cairn wants to give you the whole climbing adventure experience.
“All three games reflect on the theme of freedom,” Thoa explains.
“‘Live free’ for Furi, ‘free to love who you want’ for Haven.
For us, Mountaineering is really iconic of that search for freedom.
There is a hidden quest for freedom behind that we found really interesting.”
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