Preview: Cairn PS5 Proves Much More Impressive Than Just a Realistic Version of Only Up

When you work as a journalist, you train yourself to not be too effusive about a preview build of a game. We’re not fanboys, we’re not here to hype your product. We’re professionals. We are here to play your game and evaluate it. That said, by the time we finished playing Cairn and left the tiny booth in the French pavilion in the business area of Gamescom, we found ourselves grinning ear to ear like an idiot and excitedly messaging friends that they had to try to organise appointments to play Cairn before the end of the show.

On paper, Cairn is very simple. There is a mountain. You are going to climb it. However, unlike the spat viral climbing games like Only Up! that are going around, Cairn is a simulation. It wants to emulate the feeling, the stress, the tension, the relief, and the reward of real rock climbing — and having only climbed the first summit, we’re glad to report it does just that and then some.

For a game seeking to be something of a simulation, Cairn’s controls are devilishly simple. On flat land, you walk around like any other third-person game. However, walk up to a vertical surface and press square and the ambient music fades away, leaving only the wind and your left hand being controlled by your left analogue stick. Find a hold you can grab onto (easily identifiable thanks to the game’s fantastic-looking cell shading) and press square again to grab it. Now you are in control of your right hand: find a handhold for that too, press square, grab on. Now do the same with your right foot. And now your left foot. And now climb that mountain.

There are more mechanics than that obviously; the whole game is a systems drive and the devs outlined that when climbing, there are no manually created animations. — it's all simulated. Instead, it was the rock face itself that got the attention of The Game Bakers as those potential routes (and dead ends) were all designed by hand. This means if the game thinks you're overextending or putting too much weight on one limb, you (and the controller) shake. Thankfully, you can hammer in a limited number of pivots which allow you to belay off the rock face. This is great if you find yourself over-extended or if you need a moment to zoom out and plan your route.

Or you could play as we did and forget you have any of this gear and just free climb until the devs got so anxious they started comparing us to Alex Honnold, the infamous free climber, and star of the nerve-shredding documentary Free Solo.

Once you do reach a plateau, you can use your handy robot to retract your gear for the next face and even track your route and see which sections really strained your muscles. The devs also highlighted that Cairn has light survival mechanics, and you'll have to manage not just your physical health (falling to your last pivot will really hurt), but also your energy, hunger, and thirst. On top of all this, as the game goes on you'll find yourself fighting the elements too but what gameplay role high winds, rain, and sub-zero temperatures have to play were not elaborated on.

Despite only playing the game for 40-odd minutes, we found ourselves entranced in the loop and systems of Cairn, and by the time we reached our first plateau and the camera panned up to the ice-capped behemoth that awaited us, we couldn’t wait to test our bodies again.

Cairn is slated to launch on PS5 in 2025, from Furi and Haven developer The Game Bakers. Is it one you're looking forward to playing next year? Share your thoughts in the comments below.