Review

Cairn

A single-player climbing game where you ascend a mountain by choosing your own route, placing pitons and managing your character's stamina and supplies. There is a survival side, and a mistake can mean a fall. It has a stylised look and a quiet, focused mood. Is it your kind of game?

ClimbingSurvivalRoute planningSwitchPCPlayStation

Games like Cairn

8/10

Game Avant verdict

A climbing game that makes every move a physical decision and every rest a small victory, held back by rough edges and a story that says less than the mountain does.

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By GameAvant · Published Oct 7, 2026 · Updated Oct 9, 2026 · 15 min read

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IGDB

85%

39 ratings

Steam:

94%

18,373 reviews

Fits you if

you want a slow, tense survival-climbing game where planning matters.

Skip it if

you want fast action or a forgiving, relaxed experience.

Availability

Where to play

Steam

$23.99

Buy

Facts

Platforms: Switch · PC · PlayStation
Release date: January 29, 2026
Length: About 15 hours
Difficulty: 4/5 (estimated)
Genres: Simulator · Sport · Adventure · Indie
Themes: Action · Survival
Perspective: Third person
Modes: Solo only
Languages: 3 languages
Text in your language: Yes
Steam Deck: Verified
Microtransactions: None

More about Cairn

Cairn strips climbing games down to the one thing that actually makes climbing difficult: deciding, limb by limb, where your body goes next. Developed and published by The Game Bakers, the French studio previously known for Furi and Haven, Cairn arrived on PlayStation 5 and Windows on 29 January 2026 after being delayed from its original November 2025 date, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version announced for later release. There is no sword here, no jump button that papers over a bad read of the terrain, and no double jump to bail you out of a mistake. You play Aava, a professional mountaineer attempting to summit Mount Kami, a fictional peak that borrows its scale and menace from the Himalayas, the Alps, and France's own Vercors massif, and the game's entire design philosophy is built around giving you direct, limb-level control over how she climbs it. That control is the whole game. Every reach, every handhold, every transfer of weight from one limb to another is something you actively decide rather than something an animation system handles for you, and the mountain is built to punish the assumption that any single move is obvious or safe. Hunger, weather, and a steadily shrinking supply of pitons all factor into how far Aava can realistically get before a climb has to be aborted, which means Cairn is as much a resource-management survival game as it is a platformer, and it treats both halves of that description with equal seriousness. Ledges become places to stop and think rather than places to pass through, because the game wants you reading the rock face, not reacting to it. The result is deliberately slow and often tense in a way that climbing games rarely commit to this fully. Where most action-adventure climbing sequences exist to move you quickly between set pieces, Cairn makes the climbing itself the set piece, stretched out until every successful pitch feels like an earned result rather than an animation you triggered. That pacing will not suit everyone, and the game does not pretend otherwise: this is closer to a survival sim wearing a mountaineering skin than a traditional adventure game, and players expecting fast traversal or forgiving checkpoints will find the opposite by design. Where Cairn falls short is in its narrative, which stays deliberately quiet compared to how much the mountain itself communicates through sheer physical presence, along with a handful of technical rough edges that show up around the climbing system's edges. Neither undoes what the core idea accomplishes. The climbing system here is one of the more genuinely original ideas in recent action-adventure design, built by a studio willing to commit fully to a mechanic most games would have softened into something more forgiving, and Mount Kami is worth climbing precisely because the game never lets you forget how much it could cost you.

The thing you'll love. Or hate.

Every limb is yours

Survival on a vertical map

A mountain that pushes back

Not quite for you?

Three alternatives, one line each on why.

Shorter

Similar, but noticeably shorter.

With co-op

Similar, but playable together.

Cheaper or free

Similar, for less money.

Frequently asked questions

How long is Cairn?: About 15 hours to finish the main story.
Which platforms is Cairn on?: Cairn is available on Switch · PC · PlayStation.
Does Cairn have co-op?: No, Cairn is single-player only.
Does Cairn run on Steam Deck?: Verified
What does Cairn cost?: $23.99 on Steam.