It's funny just how efficiently one can summarise the construction of Insurmountable. Scale mountains with hextile-based movement whilst managing your sanity, energy, etc meters with items and random hextile-placed events. It's a roguelike, so die on any of the three mountains of your run and that's it.

The scientifically optimal way to rest.

Any game can be summarised as efficiently as you want of course, but what I mean is that Insurmountable boiled down is essentially meter management. But relatively exciting meter management?

Forgiving its small indie nature, goddamn does it work. Of course the 'mountaineer roguelike' pitch no doubt inspires thoughts of a 'Strand Game' approach. Direct control, natural looking terrain and all that jazz. When judged on what it actually is, Insurmountable is compelling. Perhaps not lastingly so, but consuming for those first playthroughs nonetheless.

Insurmountable thrives in the tension it can generate from a simple depleted vital meter. It's not immediate Game Over if your energy spirals to nought. Movement and climbing become sluggish and laboured. Pop-ups blare out music that screams crisis whilst intermittently detailing your climber's harrowing descent into vitals failure. Pop-up by pop-up that health meter gets chipped away at and so many temporary reprieves simply mean you're on borrowed time.

It's how unpleasant a process Insurmountable makes being in the red that is its masterstroke. Good management and dancing between feeding those meters so you can avoid the dreaded, slow, and panic inducing climb down the death ladder becomes rewarding as a result.

Learning all the systems at play is engaging enough. Weather, time of day, altitude, whether you have a tent/cave to sleep in, etc will all affect the meter drain. Events present risk-reward choices, items and good opportunities for meter boosts. Items and skills both present a means to specialise in draining a meter less or boosting them in very logical ways. Some abilities can be activated for a limited time for such boosts, but also perhaps ignoring difficult terrain generating injuries - which affect meters. You get it. Everything comes down to those meters!

Bottoms...

Those systems are all sufficiently detailed and fun to consider, then. The events are the weak link, I think. From what I've played, risk-reward considerations seem to lean massively towards reward in outcome. I learned that it really wasn't ever not worth pursuing a lead on anything. The experience gain alone is worth it. That might well be the difficulty I played on, however. The one - perhaps unavoidable - aspect of these random events is that they're not majorly contextual to the tile you find them. If one thing leads me to describe the game in terms of its systems instead of experience, it's this disconnect between the environment and the mechanics. It's a difficult thing to solve with a small studio and a procedural roguelike. The result is that I know I'm moving between event tiles rather than considering for instance where a cave might be in the landscape.

Events as they're written aren't boring mind you. They remind me an awful lot of playing the Netflix interactive show You vs. Wild with Bear Grylls. Right down to 'should you eat these berries?' At least Insurmountable is kind enough to not yet give me an instant Game Over for being peckish. Spoilers for Bear Grylls' masterpiece there.

I love that the three characters aren't just different loadouts of skills and items, but they each carry with them their own backstories and motivations. Reaching those peaks was so much easier for wanting to prove this rebellious scientist's theory right. It's an ingenious addition. 'The only zen you’ll find on the mountain tops, is the zen you bring with you' or something...

So roguelikes inherently beg to be played repeatedly. Do I want to play Insurmountable into the early hours of my late years until my dying breath infects the air? Not currently, no. In fairness to Insurmountable, its concept makes it a difficult bar to surmount. It's hard to compete with the moment-to-moment variation and responsiveness of a typical combat-centric roguelike. Random events and a different environment feel much too much like retreading ground.

Presentation is all-around great and the UI is clear and informative. Yes, the very functional hexagonal tiles protruding upwards do look odd, but you get used to it. There's nothing quite like that view from the peak and seeing how far you've come - complemented by some beautiful auroras. A nice touch.

...up!

Whilst Insurmountable doesn't quite scale being an ultra-replayable and varied roguelike, the core experience is a uniquely tense and rewarding experience. If you're interested in some slow dread creep with a cup of tea and some bottled oxygen at hand, this is well worth summiting.