Blog

At The Game Bakers we care about our planet. Since 2022, we have taken measures to reduce the impact of our studio and games on the environment. Today we’re announcing that we are joining the Playing for the Planet alliance. Want to know more about what we are doing on this important topic?

• We can’t improve what we can’t measure, so we’re measuring our studio and games carbon footprint with Jyros. We set ourselves targets and review every year. With P4P Alliance we have now committed to reach net zero by 2030.

• We have taken measures to reduce our footprint as a studio, with work from home, travel reduction of travel, a green energy supplier for the office, recycling equipment, vegetarian meals…

• We are also offering a financial incentive for employees working from home ready to switch their homes to green energy. We would love to know if other studios are taking similar steps. Do you know of any?

• We’re optimizing our (digital) games to reduce their energy consumption, from their download size to how much energy they use. We’re learning more about how we can optimize. We’re also planning to update our previous games using what we learn with support from France 2030 program.

• For our next game Cairn – an ode to the awe inspiring nature in the mountains, we are preparing a collaboration to help alleviate some of our impact and generally do some good. More soon!

• Most of our games have underlying themes that will make players reflect on the importance of the environment, the worlds and nature around our protagonists: Squids, Haven, Furi, Cairn…

• We participate in actions to raise awareness about sustainability in games, like Midgar’s Zero Carbon Quest or the Earth Appreciation festival 2025. The Green Game jam from P4P is also one to watch.

• We also want to thank organisations who work for a more sustainable game industry and are helping all of us by providing tools and guidance: teams like Jyros, the Sustainable Game Alliance or UKIE (and their useful reports ) among others.

Hi everyone,

We’re coming back with an update to the demo! We are introducing a few new features and fixing quite a few bugs. Have a read for details!

New features:

• You can now heal your fingers in the bivouac using climbing tape
• Your Climbot can now compost trash and items, and produce some very useful chalk!
• You can now remap the controls to accommodate your play style
• You can now jump rappel and slide rappel
• You can now browse all the letters and papers you find in your backpack

Fixes and improvements:

• Our Climbot friend should find its way even better now
• Saving: new a load menu and possibility to load save from pause menu
• Camera: new special camera when entering bivouac
• Audio: new barks, several audio improvements
• Tutorials: new tutorial on how to use the light on the staff
• Settings: new gameplay settings (save reminder, hold feedback..)
• Dualsense: improvement to haptic / trigger effect / speaker…
• Fix: No more rope between Aava and Climbot if no piton planted
• Changes to rope swinging
• Optimization for performance
• Multiple bug fixes

All of this is available in version 1.0.94_945.

We hope you’ll enjoy these changes, as usual, let us know your thoughts here in the comments or on our Discord.

Thank you for playing the demo and getting ready for the ascent of Mount Kami in a few months now!

Hi everyone,

The demo has been played by over 500,000 players now. We’re glad all of you are training to ascent Mount Kami in a few months now. We’re incredibly thankful that you’re enjoying the demo, and want to celebrate with you. How about a chance to win some Cairn merch?

Screenshot by Fs.Retro

Use the in-game photo mode to capture a screenshot, anywhere in the demo, an send your screenshot to fanart@thegamebakers.com before July 29 at 5pm CEST to enter. We can’t wait to see your pictures!

The merch to win: Cairn stickers and carabiners!

Note: Merch can ship to everywhere but Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Crimea, Sevastopol, Yemen, Haiti.

We’re happy to confirm that survival-climber Cairn will release on PS5 November, 5 2025. You can attempt your first ascent with Aava today, as a demo is available now on PS5! Go and hone your climbing skills on the Tenzen mountain ridge before the ascent of unforgiving Mount Kami.

It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves

A cairn is a stack of stones piled up to mark a trail or as a memorial. It’s a very good representation of the idea “I made it this far”.

In Cairn, our survival climbing game, you will need determination and persistence to “make it this far”. When we decided to make a video game about alpinism, we were fascinated by the dedication and resolve shown by climbers. They are ready to risk everything because of how extraordinary it makes them feel: extremely satisfied and free. And that’s the emotion we wanted to replicate and make you feel, as a player. 

We spent 3 years of research and development to create our own way to climb. It’s completely unique and new. You’ve climbed already in video games, but most games use climbing as a traversal mechanic, to reach a different location. In Cairn, climbing is the actual challenge, it’s where you fail or succeed. It’s what will make your hands sweat. 

The pillars of our climbing gameplay are what make it unique: a simple yet deep climbing control, and total freedom to climb anywhere.

Easy to learn, hard to ma…ouch! my finger!

First, it is simple to climb. We made a deep simulation gameplay while keeping simple inputs. In Cairn you control each hand and feet individually, but with just the left stick and one button to grab the wall. Ninety percent of the inputs you make are just moving the left stick and pressing Square. Feels simple right? So does Gran Turismo when you steer and accelerate with the same two inputs, but yet you’ll be practicing for hours to improve your lap time by 3 seconds. In Cairn the challenge is not about the controls of the limbs, it’s about placing them tactically, and keeping your character in balance. 

We worked on an advanced movement system that makes your character move like a climber according to what you aim for with your hand or foot. The simulation calculates the body mechanic, but also the efforts, and your character gets tired and out of breath in consequence.  

The result is a very strong immersion: you only look at your character, listen to their breathing, feel their limbs shaking directly on your hands with the precise Dualsense controller vibrations. There is no UI feedback. You learn to read the exhaustion status of the climber. By practicing, you know what’s an impossible move, a bold one and a safe one. 

What’s great with climbing is that the goal is pretty clear: reach the next ledge, the next summit. You see your objective, you just have to reach it. And failing is pretty obvious too: you fall. This helps you focus on what’s important: your body, your movements, your stamina. And eventually, when you reach that ledge, relief and joy!

Route-finding is speaking the mountain’s language

The second revolution in Cairn is the freedom to climb everywhere. It’s not a path or a branching of paths designed by level designers, it’s a whole mountain and you can slip your hand into every crack you see. 

The mountain was built rock by rock by our design team (whom I thank dearly). And that brings incomparable feelings of freedom. Even our level designers don’t know where you’ll climb, what route you will choose. 

During our playtests, we noticed something quite interesting: video game players usually walked towards the wall and started climbing. While actual rock climbers looked at the wall before climbing, noticed cracks, holds, hoverhangs, jugs in the rock, and decided on a route. Planning ahead, adapting to the wall, pausing to breathe and rest, decrypting the rock… it’s part of the fun in Cairn. Every second you play, you’re facing a choice. 

Topping out

Cairn is not only a climbing simulation. It’s an immersion into a beautifully stylized nature, it’s hearing a storm rumbling, alone in the mountain, it’s surviving hunger, cold, thirst and pain. It’s about Aava’s journey as she attempts to reach the summit, and the people and places she will find on the way. It’s about her determination and sacrifices, her search for freedom. But we’ll let you know more about all these aspects of the game soon…

Hello climbers,

In our latest trailer, you’ve heard the first track Toxic Avenger created for Cairn! It’s time to talk about the standout collaboration behind the game music: The Toxic Avenger (Furi, Road 96) joins forces with Martin Stig Andersen (Control, LIMBO, INSIDE) and Franco-Brazilian singer and composer Gildaa for a powerful, atmospheric soundtrack. Here’s more about that collaboration.

The Toxic Avenger is a French DJ and electronic music producer you might have heard in Furi and in many other soundtracks like Road 96 or The Crew.

We worked with The Toxic Avenger on Furi, for which he created some of the most iconic tracks (like My Only Chance or Make this Right). We absolutely loved working with him then, and we’re super excited to have him back for Cairn.

In Cairn, you can also hear the amazing work of Martin Stig Andersen, the game audio director and composer, who is well known for creating the immersive soundtracks of LIMBO, INSIDE or Control.

Martin is composing the music you hear as you climb, weaving together the work from Gildaa, The Toxic Avenger and his own creation. We’re excited for you to hear it all in the final game.

Cairn’s demo is out now on Steam and PlayStation, and you can wishlist the game to support us!

Hi climbers,

We work hard to make our games as accessible as possible and for Cairn we have some features like the Rewind that will make a big difference. Yesterday, Cairn was a part of the Access-Ability showcase where we presented Cairn’s accessibility features.

Watch the video below, and keep reading to get a more in-depth list.

There are two main features that we think will be game changers in making Cairn more accessible:

Rewind is our key accessibility feature. Climbing is challenging, and everything can change in the blink of an eye. With rewind, you can get back to where you were before you made a mistake. This allows you to try again right in the midst of the action, and also to experiment!

Another feature we know players will appreciate is the ability to rebind all inputs. While the climbing inputs are simple, we know everyone has a preference on how to map their controller or keyboard. This will also allow Cairn to function on most adaptive controllers.

Here’s a list of more accessibility options you’ll have access to in the full game, and what we took into consideration so Cairn is accessible by design:

• By design, the UI never relies on color only. There’s always an accompanying animation or design that allows the game to be played without color perception.
• By design, our UI texts are large (there’s no option, but the smaller text in Cairn is approximately as big as the biggest text in most other games)
• By design, the game is localized, fully subtitled, with subtitles designed for readability
• By design, Cairn’s UI is minimal, but the climbing cues are both visual and auditory. When your stamina runs low, the breathing changes, the limbs start to shake, and the camera zooms in.
• Cairn lets you select your route, which also allows you to control the difficulty level of your ascent.
• There are 3 different difficulty levels: Explorer, Alpinist, and free solo.
  • There’s an option for an assist mode, which greatly reduces difficulty
• And many other options that will enhance accessibility:
  • Option to skip the piton mini-game that requires timing
  • Option to highlight limbs when climbing, which improves visibility
  • Option to switch between “Hold” or “Toggle” for inputs
  • Option to invert the X/Y axis
  • A slider for vibration intensity
  • You can pause the game
  • All cutscenes are skippable