Cairn: The Climbing Game That Made 600,000 Players Hold Their Breath
From the makers of Furi and Haven, a survival climber where every handhold is your choice. A hit demo, a short delay and 300,000 sales in ten days. How 25 people built a mountain.
Most games let you climb by holding a button. Cairn makes you place every hand and every foot. Move your left hand to that crack. Shift your weight. Find a toehold. Breathe. Look down if you dare. It is slow, tense and strangely beautiful, and in early 2026 it became one of the indie stories of the year.
Cairn, from French studio The Game Bakers, launched on 29 January 2026 on PC and PlayStation 5. It sold more than 200,000 copies in its first three days and over 300,000 within about a week and a half. On Metacritic it scores 85 on PC, and 93% of critics on OpenCritic recommend it. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is planned for early 2027.
A survival climber
The studio calls Cairn a "survival climber". You play Aava, a mountaineer attempting to climb the fictional Mount Kami. You control her limbs directly, choosing holds, managing her stamina and deciding when to rest. Between climbs you manage survival needs and gear, and the mountain tells its own quiet story as you go.
It is not a punishing simulator, though. The game includes accessibility options such as a rewind feature and an assist mode that switches off survival needs, so you can focus on the climb.
The team behind the mountain
The Game Bakers are best known for Furi (2016), a boss-rush action game with a cult following, and Haven (2020), a romance adventure about a couple on a strange planet. The studio describes Cairn as the end of a "trilogy on freedom" that started with those two games.
Development began in 2020 with a team of about 25 people and a budget of around €5 million. Creative director Emeric Thoa led the project. Comic book artist Mathieu Bablet served as art director and lead writer, giving the game its distinctive graphic-novel look. The audio and co-composition came from Martin Stig Andersen, famous for the haunting sound of Limbo and Inside, working with Gildaa and The Toxic Avenger.
Getting the mountain right
Mount Kami is fictional, but it is built on real places. The team drew on the Himalayas, the Alps and France's Vercors Massif. They visited the Aiguille du Midi, a famous peak above Chamonix, and consulted the alpinist Élisabeth Revol and mountain guide Loan Giroud. Emeric Thoa also named the manga The Summit of the Gods and climbing documentaries as inspirations.
By the numbers
- 2020: development begins
- About 25: people on the team
- About €5 million: development budget
- 600,000+: players who tried the demo by October 2025
- 29 January 2026: launch on PC and PS5, after a delay from 5 November 2025
- 200,000+: copies sold in the first three days
- 300,000+: copies sold in about a week and a half
- 85: Metacritic score on PC
Why it caught fire
A genuinely new feeling. Climbing has been a background mechanic in hundreds of games. Cairn made it the whole game, and it feels unlike anything else.
The demo did the marketing. Hundreds of thousands of players had already felt the tension of a hard climb before launch day. Many of them came back to buy it.
Craft and pedigree. A team with a recognisable style, a comic artist's eye and one of the most respected sound designers in games gave Cairn instant credibility.
Not everything landed. Some critics found Aava's characterisation thin, and others pointed to awkward climbing animations and technical issues. But even the harsher reviews tended to agree on one thing: there is nothing quite like it.
What's next
The Game Bakers are adding free content in a series called "On the Trail", which follows the route of a famous mountaineer. The first update, Deep Water, adds three new climbing locations and lets you play as Marco. Cairn has also earned two Golden Joystick Award nominations for 2026, for Best Game Trailer and Best Indie Game (Self-Published).
WGC's take: Cairn is the rare game that turns a single verb into an entire experience. For another 2026 indie that made a simple activity unforgettable, read our feature on Big Walk (Big Walk).