Cairn

Hello climbers,

We’re releasing the Quality of Life update for Cairn with a bunch of adjustments, new features and bug fixes that will make your experience with Cairn even smoother. In particular we are bringing tweaks to accessibility, features you asked for like the automatic finger tapping, a new feature to visualise Aava’s efforts, improvements to Aava’s getting off walls, Climbot’s behaviour and much more.

Here are the major changes:

• Tweaks to accessibility:
  • Ticking the No survival option will refill your survival gauges, helping you get out of a difficult situation
  • When you’re in difficulty, you now have more chances to find useful loot for your survival
• On your PS5 you can now chose a Performance mode prioritizing framerate
• You can now automatically tape your fingers
• The breathing feedback option lets you visualise Aava’s efforts. We’re hoping this feature can help climbers with hearing disabilities, let us know if it does and how we can improve!
• Photo mode additional options: remove Aava’s hood, change damage level, add logo… We’re ready to see your new pictures!
• We have also improved some behaviours – in particular regarding Aava getting down from a wall without falling. and Climbot’s general behaviour so he gets less close to you especially in Free Solo mode.
• We have also fixed a significant quantity of bugs!

Read the full update here: https://bit.ly/Cairn-FAQ

Thank you for your feedback so far, we’re still working on features and improvements that will make their way to the game later this year. 

Aava’s new outfit and no hood option in the Photo Mode

The breathing feedback option lets you see Aava’s efforts

Performance options on PS5

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. Here’s a short video presenting Cairn’s accessibility features, as originally shown in the Access-Ability showcase. Watch the video below, and keep reading to get a more in-depth list.

Fall Rewind

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!

Rebind All Inputs

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.

Difficulty levels and Assist Mode

There are 3 different difficulty levels: Explorer, Alpinist, and Free Solo. In Explorer and Alpinist there is an Assist Mode, with different options which greatly reduces difficulty. You can chose to toggle:

• Fall Rewind – to recover from any fall
• Infinite climbing gear resources – you have infinite supply of pitons, chalk and tape
• Auto-saving – saving when you reach solid ground
• No survival – you will never be hungry, thirsty or cold.

Cairn also lets you select your route, which also allows you to control the difficulty level of your ascent.

Breathing Feedback

The breathing feedback option lets you visualise Aava’s efforts. We’re hoping this feature can help climbers with hearing disabilities, let us know if it does and how we can improve!

More accessibility options

Here’s a list of more accessibility options what we implemented:

• 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.
• You can automatically tape your fingers
• 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)
• The game is localized, fully subtitled, with subtitles designed for readability
• 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.
• 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 invert the X/Y axis
  • A slider for vibration intensity
  • You can pause the game
  • All cutscenes are skippable

Hi Climbers,

You’ll be able to set out on the expedition January 29, on PC and PS5 – better take some time to hone your climbing skills in the demo!

We’re also able to share more about the editions we have prepared for Cairn and we’re happy to reveal our Deluxe Edition, with:

• Kami travel book: a chronicle of Marcel and Pontus’s latest attempt at climbing Mount Kami. This rugged little guide includes tips, sketches, and a recounting of what they saw up there.  Illustrated by comic artist & game art director Mathieu Bablet. 30 pages, English & French.
• 3 exclusive keepsakes of Aava’s adventure that can be hanged on the backpack
• And wallpapers

The game will launch with a 10% discount bringing the price down to $26.99 for the Standard and $34.20 for the Deluxe. (26.99€ / £22.99 / JP¥3060 / CN¥98 for the Standard and 34.20€ / £28.60 / JP¥3924 / CN¥129 for the Deluxe).

Just a few more weeks to wait!

Hi climbers,

It’s time! Ghostly apparitions are now available in Cairn’s demo. They’re not all that scary though, we think.

You can climb Tenzen alongside selected community, dev and content creators ghosts, and see what everyone’s been getting up to. Maybe you can try something new?

A special thank you to Alex Baena, Mugthief, and Ravs for joining the ghosts

We’re bringing the routes contest back! We’re excited to see what you can come up with. Here are the categories :

• Most unexpected route – can you find one no ghost is taking?
• Most difficult free solo route – no pitons!
• Funniest route – get creative

To enter, send us a screenshot of the route recap screen at fanart@thegamebakers.com before October 20th, 2025, at 6pm CEST (9am pst)

The winners will receive some of the exclusive Cairn merch, like these postcards of the posters in the demo!

Hi Climbers, 

Today we’re bringing both good, and not so good news, but there’s still some good in it. We’ve decided to delay the launch of Cairn on PC and PS5 to Q1 2026 so we can spend a bit more time on debug and optimisation. 

To bridge the gap we’re bringing an update to Cairn’s demo on October 13, with ghosts of other players in the demo!

Cairn launching Q1 2026

The team has made the tough decision to delay Cairn to ensure that it launches at its best. Our goal has always been to create games you remember long after playing them, and for Cairn, despite our best efforts, this requires a little more time.

We’ve been running a lot of playtests, and you’ve let us know that we have something truly special with Cairn. Still, we also see the improvements we can still make to give you the best game we can. After five years of work, so close to our goal, we don’t want to rush it. 

With the game content complete, we’re going to use the extra few weeks to focus on optimization, debug, and polish. “It’s not on the mountains we trip, but on the small pebbles“.

Thank you for your patience as we finish polishing Cairn.

The mountain is in sight.

Demo Ghost Update!

In really exciting news though, we’ve been working with the community on a special demo update!

For a limited time, you’ll see ghosts of other players climbing alongside you on Mount Tenzen – speedrunners, community members and the dev team. You’ll be able to race the best, learn new techniques or discover new routes and hidden areas. Here’s a sneak peek:

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.