In 1978, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler did something that both scientists and other mountaineers considered impossible: they climbed Mount Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen. After reaching the summit, they split up for the descent, and it took Messner nearly two hours to reach base camp. When he did arrive, he was suffering from snowblindness. Later, a reporter asked him why he went up there knowing he could have so easily died. “I didn’t go up there to die,” Messner, who would return to complete the first solo ascent (also without supplemental oxygen) of Everest two years later, responded. “I went up there to live.”
It’s a sentiment that would resonate with Aava, the protagonist of Cairn. “All I ever wanted was to touch eternity for an instant,” she tells us at the outset, her eyes to the stars, “To reach one of those rare moments of bliss where everything seems in its place, and you feel you’re part of a whole.” But her mountain isn’t Everest; it’s Kami, a fictional peak no one has ever summited, and she is determined to be the first. Cairn is her story, and like both the mountain she is challenging and the climb itself, it is an incredible one.
Cairn is a game about the climb, about choosing the right route up the mountain, finding the right handhold, taking a chance on the outcropping that seems slightly out of reach, pulling yourself up to a ledge just before your strength fails. Your path to Kami’s summit is up to you and you control each of Aava’s limbs independently (with some optional assistance on by default); each part of the climb is yours. The summit is the goal, but it is enough to make it to the next Bivouac, a tent in which you can sleep, to retape your fingers, cook food, and repair pitons damaged in the climb. There are meters in Cairn that track Aava’s temperature, hunger, hydration level, and overall health, and you’ll need to manage each if you want to survive. Cairn holds you accountable for your choices (if you don’t feed Aava, she will be weaker and climbing will be harder), but it’s rarely overly punishing, and managing your limited resources based on what Kami asks of you is both challenging and rewarding.
What doesn’t have a meter is Aava’s stamina, how strong her grip is at the moment, or how well she is maintaining the position you’ve taken. For that, you’ll have to watch her: the way her arms and legs tremble on an unstable hold, the way she breathes, how she whimpers and winces as she’s about to lose her grip. These tells work great, but they can be subtle, especially at first, and you have to pay attention until you learn what to look for and how to position Aava properly as she moves up the mountain. Aava is incredibly strong, but she’s also human. She cannot hold onto smooth rock for long, nor scurry up a sheer cliff through sheer force of will. Shaking out a tired limb and refocusing while on a semi-stable hold will buy you more time, but you cannot scale all of Kami that way.
Cairn holds you accountable for your choices, but it’s rarely overly punishing.Salvation, and progress, are found in the small divots she can grab onto, tiny ledges where her feet can find purchase, a crack on the cliff face she can wedge her toes into. Sometimes, there will be nothing, and you will have to take a risk, to brace Aava’s leg against a flat surface in the hope that she can pull herself up before her strength fails or sidle across a small ledge, her hands pressed against smooth stone.
If the rock is suitable, she can drive a piton into Kami and build a belay, clipping herself to a loop of rope in order to rest. If she falls and you’ve been smart about using pitons, her Climbot helper will catch her, and you can climb the rope back to the belay, or use it to rappel down to an area you might not otherwise reach. But even here, it’s possible to make a mistake and realize you need a belay before Aava has time to drive the piton home, or twist it as it’s going in, ensuring Climbot can only recover part of it rather than the whole thing the next time you’re on solid ground. If the stone is too dense, you’ll have to make the climb unaided. These are Cairn’s most memorable moments. You are going to fall. The only question is whether or not it will kill you, and how much time you’ll lose if the mountain claims you.
You can pull the camera out for a bird’s eye view of your location at any time (and see the route you’ve taken to get there, including failed past attempts), which is crucial for planning the next leg of your ascent. There are no wrong answers. Sometimes, the route is clear, but slower; other times, it’s faster, but more difficult, and requires more risk. Often, it’s somewhere in between, and you’ll have to choose where and how the route challenges you rather than if it will. And then there are the times where you’ll think you’ve found a good route only to reach a section without a clear answer, then check the map again and see that there was another, easier path available. Sometimes, you can tough it out with smart choices, chalk (which increases your grip strength), and a few well-placed pitons. Other times, it’s best to adjust your path.
Climbing Kami is exhilarating, and I often found myself gazing up at the path before me wondering how I would manage it, only to look down and realize I had a short time later. There is joy in planning out a route, in securing a piton at the last second before Aava falls, in finding the right handhold or wedging Aava’s feet into a crevice that unlocks a path that seemed impassible, in chalking up and daring to persist a difficult section in the rain instead of waiting it out on a belay, in seeing the path you chart in your head becoming the route you’ve taken, in finally pulling yourself onto a ledge after a particularly difficult climb when the night is falling and your visibility is failing and Aava is dehydrated and hungry and tired, in beating the mountain through sheer, dogged determination. The act of climbing doesn’t change much throughout Cairn’s runtime (my playthrough took me 19 hours, but I was very thorough), and occasionally Ava’s limbs may spider in strange directions or she may fall through the mountain, but I was so invested it hardly mattered.
I will never summit Kami; my victory is inevitable.As I play, Kami exists as something without end, taller than I could possibly imagine, something I will never complete, and the mountain I am scaling, all at once. It is a remarkable balance, and something Cairn never loses. I will never summit Kami; my victory is inevitable. Each time I make it to a Bivouac (which doubles as a save point), I feel like I’ve done the impossible.
But inside, there is always more to do. I need to tape Aava’s hands, scarred and covered in blood from the climb. I need Climbot to craft new pitons from the scraps I saved. I need to cook a meal, rehydrate. Aava brings supplies to the mountain, but her backpack can only hold so much. Each time I eat a chocolate bar or drink some milk or tape Aava’s hands, I know I am using up a resource I might not get back. Each time I sleep, I know she will wake up hungry. Kami forces me to make compromises. Climbing at sunset is dangerous because I can barely see; climbing at night is nearly impossible, something I only do if I have no other choice. Sometimes, I rest not because Aava physically needs to, but because there is no way to keep going until sunrise.
But it is not all hardship. When I need something, Kami provides. In caves, on ledges, I find dandelions, perfect for tea. Raspberries. Fresh, clear water. Fish. I am always teetering on collapse, never there. There is always just enough, if I’m smart. Climbot recycles used plastic and bottles and makes chalk. Each part of my journey feeds the other.
I learn the mountain’s story. I find the remains of a cable car and its station, of smashed-open vending machines, flyers and advertisements. Tourists walked here, once. Companies offered anyone the chance to see the mountain until it wasn’t profitable anymore, until it failed, until the mountain pushed back. I find the remains of the troglodytes, a civilization built on Kami, beautiful cities carved into the mountain, great statues. I explore. I learn of their resentment of climbers like Aava, the way civilization came for them, encroached on them, eventually forced them down. The remains of what they built are marked by pitons and covered in climbing rope. “My mountain belongs to everyone,” Aava tells a goat that attacks her. But in climbing it, I realize it isn’t true. By being here, I am profaning something sacred. I am walking through the graveyard of a culture people like Aava helped kill.
And I am reminded of the cost of what I am attempting. Sometimes, the hints are subtle. Bear-proof boxes full of supplies. Abandoned backpacks. Other times, they are less so. Dead bodies. “Sometimes you come for the mountain,” Aava says gently, kneeling over someone who shared a dream with her. ‘Sometimes the mountain comes for you.” Abandoned campsites. I learn of a group tracking bears on the mountain, and I wonder what happened to them, and about what I might run into as I ascend. I find the corpse of one-half of a climbing team, two orphans who promised to conquer Kami together, and a letter saying the other has gone on in search of a mystical flower with healing properties, hoping to save his partner. I find markings and letters from a couple who scaled Kami together, getting a little higher each time they attempted it. A broken Climbot still receiving messages because maybe that means the climber it belonged to still is, too.
These stories, and others, recur and build on themselves as I climb, and I find them moving. I explore, go out of my way, to see them. Cairn is not just about Aava; it is about Kami, and everyone who has attempted to climb it. There seem to be two outcomes: either they turn back, or they die. Kami remains unconquered. The mountain always wins.
Stories recur and build on themselves as I climb, and I find them moving.As I ascend, I also learn about Aava, about the kind of person she is, about who someone driven to do something like this must be. Climbot relays messages she receives as she climbs. From her agent, Chris, who goes from begging her to send him photos to appease their sponsors to just begging her to let him know she’s all right. From her friends, who sing her happy birthday. From her partner, Noami, who does not understand why she is doing this, who reminds her of the cost of what she’s attempting. Aava mostly ignores them. Sometimes they make her smile, make her sad. Sometimes, she is angry with Climbot for playing them.
She meets other people on the mountain. A climber named Marco, who is a fan, grew up reading about her exploits. She is terse with him, occasionally unkind, though she does not mean to be. The quest for the summit may drive her, but she is running away from the world on the ground as much as she is climbing toward Kami’s peak. For everyone else, there is a life at the bottom of the mountain. All they have to do is give up and come down. For Avaa, the climb is all there is.
Cairn never gives us the whole story; everything comes in pieces, in hints, in what’s left unsaid, and in small comments, like the one she makes to Marco when he mentions her father, himself a climber, who put Aava on her first climbing wall when she was three years old. “Great guy,” Marco says, impressed. “So they tell me,” she responds. Like the mountain itself, Aava is complicated, complex, imperfect. And like the mountain, she is incredible. How I felt about her changed as I climbed, but I always understood her. As long as she faced Kami, so would I.
At the end of Cairn, Aava must make a choice about who she is, what she is willing to sacrifice, and how the experience of climbing Kami has changed her. It is a remarkable fusion of gameplay and storytelling, of everything you have seen and done on the mountain. Each choice leads to a different ending. Neither is wrong. I have seen both paths, and in either case, the last couple hours of Cairn are something I will remember for a very long time.
Connexion
