Cairn released late last week to glowing reviews, with Shaun Prescott calling it “prickly but approachable” in PC Gamer’s review. And clearly it’s been a big hit with the players as the devs celebrate passing a huge milestone less than a week after launch.
“Is this the revival of Kami’s golden age of tourism?” The Game Bakers say in a Bluesky post, “We couldn’t be happier to have welcomed 200,000 climbers to the mountain over the weekend.”
It’s an impressive feat that shows just how well players have taken to this new climbing sim. It even managed to sell 100,000 of those copies in just its first 24 hours on sale: “Thank you for joining the ascent,” The Game Bakers says. “We hope you feel the passion we baked into the mountain.” Its all-time player peak on Steam is slightly less impressive at just 15,000 players, but it’s still fantastic, especially since Cairn isn’t some huge live service multiplayer game.
Cairn may be unforgiving with its hazardous ascents and limited piton supplies, but the struggle only makes summiting Kami all the more rewarding if you’re able to manage it. “As punishing as it sounds, The Game Bakers have tightly designed this realism so that most players will feel the odds insurmountably stacked against them before relief arrives at the eleventh hour,” Shaun says in his review.
But it’s not all about punishment. Cairn has a rewind feature, which lets you undo fatal mistakes on the mountain. That means you can learn from your slip-ups on the go or just try out multiple routes up the cliff face if you’re curious and want to experiment. Or if you’d rather relish the pain and relive the hardships, you can look back on your climb via the route viewer at any time, showing where you overcame impossible odds or just forgot to hold onto the cliff face.
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