Cairn is a climbing game about reaching the top of a ridiculous mountain. While some routes to the apex are more obvious than others, you have a fair bit of freedom to decide how to get up there. I took the path of least resistance, but maybe you’re braver, or more masochistic, and decided to take routes not even the goats would dare tread.
If the latter is you, you’re probably disappointed there aren’t many opportunities to brag about your achievement. Sure, you can share a screenshot of your route—the in-game map shows step-by-step your exact path through Mount Kami—but sometimes sharing your achievements with people on the internet isn’t satisfying. They are, after all, people on the internet, far less human than flesh world citizens, and much more likely to randomly insult you.
If you open Cairn and go to the Extra section you’ll see a new option to create a t-shirt. You’ll need to have completed an ascent for this option to be available: if you think you can print a shirt bragging about how you made it halfway up Mount Kami, perhaps as a joke, then sorry.
Cairn was a big success upon release in February. I reviewed it, describing it as a “brilliant climbing adventure that siphons the rage out of navigation puzzlers like Death Stranding and Baby Steps”. As of March it had sold 500,000 copies—pretty good for a niche climbing sim—and come summer it’ll get its first free DLC in the form of On the Trail.
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