You think you know what it means to have an abusive relationship with a video game. But Dark Souls was a sweet and kind mistress compared to Cairn.

I fell in love with this game immediately. The vibes just felt perfect and I knew from the atmosphere to the music to the unrestricted freedom, this was my open road. This game took the love I was ready to give and strangled me with it. (and I said choke me harder mommy, obviously)

This is realism without condescension. You want to feel like you're really climbing this mountain? here's full control over your body. figure out how to place your grip, distribute your weight, and drag yourself painstakingly up the rock wall. feed and hydrate your broken body somehow. rest enough. not enough. I hope you weren't in a hurry. You're going to take it slow and contemplate your movements, your surroundings, and you're going to fall over and over and have to lose handfuls of progress. because there is no guard rail. it's your body and you're going to use or abuse it however you want to get up this mountain.

This attitude is mirrored by the PC, and the story which is just I'm going to climb this mountain, damn everything else. Aava is not likeable. Sure, she's kind of fun in how callous and single minded she is at first, but it very quickly becomes obvious she's a selfish asshole and most likely suicidal and trying to die up here. her friends, agent, girlfriend, and the occasional stranger try everything to reach out to her. and her response is, I don't care. You aren't getting your feel good story about overcoming adversity. You are watching an asshole ruin everything in her life with an obsession. It fits here. and I appreciated that it wasn't softened.

I loved this game. and I hate it. I hate it so much. It broke me, kicked me when I was on the ground and went get up we're not done. This is something a game should do.

If you don't like all that harshness though, there's a wealth of accessibility options. you can disable the survival aspects, give yourself infinite tools and resources, undo your mistakes, get more generous saves. anything you can want. this isn't the intended experience. the intended experience is suffering. but it's your game, and you can break it.

There's something magical that happens while watching Aava contort her body to fit the task at hand—each limb stretching and compressing, grabbing onto and pushing off the tiniest of ledges. I swear it feels as though time stands still, each passing second reduced to individual choices: place your right hand here, pull your left leg out of there, push up. The actual task of reaching the peak fades into the background, almost a distraction in a way, this moment necessarily overshadowing all others because if enough limbs are misplaced, the journey ends, and the struggle will have been for nothing. That tunnel vision is not new to me, but I never thought I would experience it in a video game of all things.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I've always felt a kinship with athletes. I am far from one myself—in fact, some might say I’m as far as one can get. I’m a writer, and at the core of both professions I would argue lies the pursuit of something indescribable: the urge to do a thing for the sake of doing it, the act itself the ultimate goal. There’s a begrudging but necessary love of process and repetition, this compartmentalization—breaking down seemingly impossible tasks into individual moments as you meticulously pick each word in the way a marathon runner plans each step. All of this is in service of a distant whole, a goal that could only be explained once reached, perhaps not even then. For me, climbing Mount Kami felt like writing, in the best ways and the worst.

A writer’s work is defined/limited by their mind—their experience with the world and their earned ability to coherently translate those experiences—much in the same way an athlete's pursuits are defined by their body and the time spent honing it, pushing it past its limits; tedious repetition turning the soft, pliable parts of you into rock. This takes time, an unreasonable amount of it—time you might have gifted to family, to friends, to a stranger who could have eventually, maybe, become something more. Time you could have given to another part of yourself, building something wholly new out of a side of your mind now left neglected, forever vacant.

I watch Aava pull the entire weight of her body up with her fingertips, her bandages stained with blood, her body shaking with exhaustion. I watch her ignore the voices of those she loves, echoing from the faceless, nameless robot, the only companion she’s chosen on this journey. I see the burden she has willingly placed on her shoulders, the pain she has made herself endure. I’ve seen her through hunger, through cold, through poison, and even through death. I’ve seen her at her worst, I’ve seen her at her best, and I’ve marveled at the realization that for her they are one and the same—because that is what Kami demands. She has heard the call of the mountain and answered, knowing each step will take a toll. I see Aava in all her glorious frailty, in her rageful triumph, and I can't help but see myself.

A recurring theme of this game is the “why” of obsession—the question anyone asks when they see someone like Alex Honnold climb a skyscraper with no safety ropes: why tf is he doing that? There is no answer, at least none suitable enough to justify the sacrifices such a feat demands. Though I can’t say I’m taking the same risks Alex or Aava has, I can’t help but ask myself a similar question as I wake up day after day in solitude, building spaces only I can see in my mind. Why keep writing? Because I can’t imagine anything else more worthy of my time. Because if I didn’t, I don’t know that there would be anything left of me. It’s masochism—as I sit here broke, lonely, and tired of my own thoughts. It’s ego, pure arrogance fueling my dreams, unapologetic selfishness—a need for the world to celebrate me, my temporary existence on this rock we’ve all shared. It’s simply because I know I can, and therefore I know I must.

I am far from being a sports game fan, but I have always tried the few climbing adventure games that have come out. None have so totally nailed what the genre could be as Cairn.

You play as Avaa, a woman attempting to climb the highest peak that no one has ever been able to climb. Along the way, you will meet odd friends and harsh weather, ultimately turning it into a survival game.

The gameplay is just amazing. For the climbing mechanic, you control each limb one at a time, strategically finding footholds and positions in order to make incremental progress. When you pass a particularly challenging stretch, you can place down a piton which acts as a checkpoint in case you fall.

Meanwhile, there are hunger; thirst, and cold meters, which you manage through consumables in your backpack. Resting at a tent will save the game and allow you to wrap your fingers (improving grip), cook food, and scavenge the area for resources.

It is a challenging game that really simulates what it might feel like to go off on an impossible life-threatening voyage. One section had me falling and dying over 75 times, so it definitely gave that fromsoft feeling of accomplishing a feat against great odds. The climbing mechanic takes lots of practice, focus, and is a genuine skill that improves over time. All in all, I really had a blast and would love to play more games like this - well written adventures with perfected gameplay mechanics.