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.
Cairn is featured in the Tribeca Festival! Tribeca is famous for its independent films and games selection, which made it a great opportunity for us to tell you more about Cairn’s story and the people who bring it to life. Indeed Cairn is not just a fantastic sandbox for climbing in realistic conditions, it also follows the deep and emotional story of Aava, attempting to ascent a mountain she trained for her whole life.
We’ve mentioned it before, Cairn’s art director and writer is Mathieu Bablet, the acclaimed author of award winning comic books Carbone & Siliciumor Shangri-la. Renowned for his thought-provoking storytelling and visually stunning science fiction, Bablet brings his signature depth to Cairn. He crafts a gripping journey centered on Aava: her will to push herself beyond the limits—but also about the encounters she makes along the way, and the sacrifices she must face to accomplish her dream.
Aava is a tough and experienced climber, on her way to be the first to reach the summit of Mount Kami. Multi-award winning actress Sophia Eleni (Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Call the Midwife, Dungeons and Dragons…) is giving Aava all her determination and grit.
Actress and singer Camille Constantin Da Silva & Gildaa also contributes to bringing Aava to life by giving her her singing voice but also by conveying the character’s intense efforts with a rich mosaic of breath, strain, and pain sounds.
Along the ascent, Aava will meet Marco. A polar opposite of Aava, he’s cheerful and social. Hyoie O’Grady (The Division 2, Outlander…) conveys the young climber’s aspiration and his humanity.
Chris is Aava’s agent. His star climber is about to embark on the most difficult ascent in the world, and become a legend. But Adam Howden (Final Fantasy XIV, Metaphor Re:Fantasio, Xenoblade Chronicles…) is not exactly living the dream — chasing her for updates to keep the sponsors from having a meltdown.
With over 15h of playtime for the main storyline only, Aava will make unexpected encounters along her ascent and meet characters yet to be revealed, played by an excellent cast: Aaron Neil (Peaky Blinders, Jurassic World Evolution 2, Castlevania: Nocturne…) Rebecca Benson (Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, Xenoblade Chronicles 3…) Alexandra Boulton (Dragon Quest…) Rich Keeble (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Split Fiction, New World: Aeternum…)
The voice actors were directed by SIDE UK’s team of amazing voice directors: Kate Saxton and Damien Goodwin.
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…
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
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 orThe 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.
Martin Stig Andersen
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.
Gildaa
Last but very much not least, Gildaa wears two hats for Cairn. She is co-composing and singing in the game, but recorded all of Aava’s efforts and breathing materials to support the climbing system. She is a rising star on the French music scene, with her debut album coming later this year (listen to her single Pas Assez!). She sat for an interview with us about her role(s) in Cairn, have a watch!
Cairn’s demo is out now on Steam and PlayStation, and you can wishlist the game to support us!
A lot of you have been asking if Cairn would be available on console, and we’re happy to confirm that Cairn will launch on PS5 and PC later this year. The game will shine on PS5 and PS5 pro, and we’re already having fun with the haptics implementation. This is the announcement trailer:
https://youtu.be/9keovn3_GOE
Of course we’d love to bring the game to other platforms like we did for our previous games. But for now our small team is 100% committed to launch on PC and PS5 at best quality.
Wishlist the game on Playstation 5 here! https://bit.ly/Cairn-PS5Store
We’re back with a demo update, and improvements a lot of you have been requesting!
Most of the time, it’s good to rely on the game’s calculations to select the best limb to move next. It’s smooth and efficient. But there’s always this one time where you want total control. We heard you. So we are introducing New manual limb selection modes! Not one, not two, but four different control schemes to suit all playstyles!
These are the different modes to pick from: face buttons and shoulder buttons on gamepad, WASD on keyboard, and a quadrant selection on both.
After some testing, we think these are the best ways to let you manually control the limbs, but of course we’d love to hear what you think about it.
This update is also introducing Korean localization, welcome Korean players!
We have also fixed a few bugs:
Manual limb selection: improved limb detection when selecting with the stick, added a visual helper
Some fixes on the rope to avoid weird movement
Fixed several low reproduction soft lock
Fixed PS4 controller displaying Xbox inputs
Fixed off-belay detection
Fixed camera going through ground during recap path
Minor LD fixes to avoid being stuck in narrow spaces
Climbers, Thank you for playing Cairn! We have gathered most common questions and a list of known issues here. Here’s a link to the FAQ: bit.ly/Cairn-FAQ
Have you played Cairn’s demo yet? You definitely should! And after you’ve enjoyed all that the Tenzen mountain ridge has to offer, how about… playing it again? Maybe you can make it faster? We’re hosting a mini speedrun competition! The winner gets a Cairn carabiner and some stickers and they’re very cute.
The rules are simple,The persons who own the records on speedrun.com on December 16th at 5pm CET and can be contacted through email or social media wins the competition
We suggest these categories:
Reach the summit: just get to the top as fast as possible
Reach the summit with all 9 pitons: find all pitons, and manage to climb without breaking any
Open the box in the gym
Grab the honey: find a way to get that sweet, sweet nectar
You can climb anything, anywhere in Cairn. This means you will create your own unique route every time you climb Tenzen’s mountain ridge! Share your route with us to enter our route contest, and get a chance to win an exclusive Cairn carabiner
Send two screenshots of your complete path using Display path, or a video of your Replay path to fanart@thegamebakers.com before December 13th at 5pm CET to enter!
We’ll pick winners for two categories:
Hardest route – it can include overhangs, jumps…
most unusual route – the route we don’t see everyday!
Winners will be announced on the 16th. May the mountain be with you
We like to celebrate you enjoying our games, and gifting you the very first piece of Cairn merch, carabiners, feels fitting!
Read below for the details and rules,
Use the in-game photo mode to capture a screenshot, anywhere in the demo. Send your screenshot to fanart@thegamebakers.com before December 10th at 5pm CET to enter.
We will announce the winners on December 11th. We can’t wait to see your pictures!
By Lauranne Cauduro
