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  "path": "/cairn/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-20T10:44:12.000Z",
  "site": "https://73pctgeek.com",
  "tags": [
    "Cairn",
    "The Game Bakers",
    "QWOP"
  ],
  "textContent": "Just finished playing _Cairn_ by The Game Bakers, a game in which Aava climbs an unclimbable mountain. A survival game with puzzle elements, it also has a story to tell.\n\nI enjoyed playing it much, much more than I thought I would. Originally, I bought it because someone I follow on Mastodon tooted about it in glowing terms. They were right, it's a good game.\n\nWhile I think the game as a whole looks lovely, the characters were depicted in a less lovely fashion. I found them too stylised and just didn’t like the way they looked, a simple matter of preference. The voice acting is good, and the music is top-notch.\n\nThe story… wasn't that interesting to me. I played _Cairn_ for the climbing challenge, not the story. Also, the emotional connections forged on the mountain felt rushed, and overly intimate given the timeframe of mere days. As a non-climber I also found Aava's motivations and thoughts, quite frankly, bat-shit, but it takes all sorts. I also have Thoughts about one of the endings, finding the literal interpretation too absurd, and _my_ understanding of it somewhat dark.\n\n_Cairn_ encourages you to play with a controller, but that ain't something I do willingly, and it was fine! It's super playable with mouse + keyboard, even though I had some real QWOP-style action going on at times. I started as an absolutely terrible climber, but skill came reasonably quickly and after a few hours I was free climbing with relative ease.\n\nI avoided the survival mechanic at first, purely because I was so awful at climbing. When I _did_ try playing the survival mode, it quickly felt a bit tedious. While I found the climbing quite meditative, entering a flow state as I struggled up the cliff-face, with survival on it devolved into me focusing solely on survival to the detriment of fun. And I say this as someone who generally _prefers_ survival games. So, not _my_ type of survival game.\n\nThe devs made a couple choices that I found a bit frustrating. Once the game is completed, you can't reload that game to replay. All you can do is review/retrace your summit. The retrace is a cool feature, but not being able to reload a save point means you can't easily re-climb a portion of the mountain to try a different route. It's a whole new game. If you _do_ load a save game, it deletes all progress made after that save. So, if you are on Day 8, and want to go back and have a look at something from a previous day, and load Day 4 say, then you are back to being on Day 4. However, I very much appreciated the possibility to skip cutscenes and tutorials, keeping a second play-through snappy. There are also quite a few accessibility options letting a gamer tailor the experience somewhat.\n\nAs a disabled gamer, I'm not a fan of games that make you walk/run for long stretches at a time. A couple of sections of _Cairn_ , particularly up high, are literally just Aava slogging through snow. While I understand _why_ it's designed that way, and appreciate the point, it's just a bit tiring and painful for me to play, so I don't like it much.\n\nAll in all, _Cairn_ was a lot of fun, and deliciously frustrating at times. Whenever I wanted to scream at yet another slip or fall, Aava's various expletives and expressive noises definitely channelled my frustration, and showcased the excellent voice acting. I might have to do a third play-through.",
  "title": "Cairn",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-20T11:47:55.577Z"
}