Peak review

Grab my hand! Don't look down, don't lunge for the ledge that's too far from your grasp, that won't help you here. Just grab my hand and let me tell you all the reasons why Peak is more than just a goofy co-op fad: It's a wonderful intersection of chaos energy and cutesy pastel colours.

Working together with up to three other players, the goal that sits before you may seem like a daunting one. After crash landing on a deserted island, your only way out is to scale the behemoth of a mountain that sits before you. But to do so you need impeccable teamwork and quick problem-solving to out-climb the deadly fog that will slowly start ascending from the ground.

If the fog or falling doesn't kill you, the hunger might. How far and fast you can climb depends on how well-fed you are, how heavy your backpack is, and if you've managed to poison yourself.

So to try and get ahead of the hunger pangs my group of explorers took turns to forge ahead scouting out the best path, help each other up, and forage for resources and food. You can plunder suitcases that contain food, climbing tools, or first aid, and are found sparsely across the map, teetering on ledges or sitting on top of trees.

There's also fruit hanging from trees or nestled in bushes. Some are better to eat than others, though, like the coconut, green crispberry, or winter orange. Foods like mushrooms, the red crispberry, or the scorchberry will satiate your hunger, sure, but can give you temporary debuffs like poison or heat that'll whittle down your stamina and reduce your climbing capabilities. Food is important and can be hard to find, so stuffing your backpack with as many winter oranges as you can fit is a must.

Aside from foraging or force-feeding strange berries to your friends to see if anything bad will happen, Peak is all about climbing, making it to that rocky outcrop or tiny ledge. As long as you keep going up, it's all OK.

Onwards and upwards

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If I made a word cloud just using everything that was said during an average game of Peak, "Grab my hand" would be slap bang in the middle in absolutely huge writing, with something like "Does anyone have any bandages" probably being a close second. But that's just as it should be, because Peak is a game all about helping your friends, no matter how many dumb situations they manage to get themselves in.

During a particularly harsh snowstorm in the winter biome, my group got split up trying to go for two different suitcases we saw lying around. After the worst of the winter frost was behind us we tried to meet up but ended up playing a lengthy game of Marco Polo via proximity chat as the last member of our team was found stranded in a crevasse with no stamina left. We did get them out in the end, with a helping hand and an energy drink.

There are more obstacles than just snowstorms. At one point when we were trekking through the tropical jungle, I managed to jump on a toxic bush which exploded into a cloud of poison and launched my climbing buddy off the side of the cliff, into the abyss of the fog. The final biome is full of lava. It'll ebb and flow, meaning you have to time your leaps and scrambles to avoid fire damage.

No matter how hard things may seem, anything is possible with the power of friendship and an anti-gravity rope gun.

Staying together in Peak is a must. You can boost friends up cliffsides, pull them up just as they run out of stamina and share resources easily. It's not that hard to get to each checkpoint with four players, letting you revive any players that died along the way. And no, you don't have to drag their dead body up to do it. I found that out the hard way.

Another good incentive to stay together is the freakish skeletal creature that'll emerge from the fog and hunt you down if you decide to run ahead of your group. It's an absolutely awful experience—you don't just suffer psychological damage, but real damage too when the monster throws you off the side of the mountain. You have been warned.

One is the loneliest number

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For all its multiplayer strengths, Peak can feel utterly empty when playing it by yourself. Sure, it can be peaceful—it transforms the game into more of a solo puzzler, something nice to play while listening to a podcast. But there's no doubt that this is a game that's meant to be played with others.

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When I decided to free solo the mountain, not only did I find the climb more difficult with no one to help pull me up or tend to my wounds, but it became rather frustrating. Without anyone cheering you on from the sides, laughing at your misery, or reviving you at checkpoints, dying felt like a gut punch. Like Chained Together and Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, you have to get to the top in one run. No saves or redos—if you fall all the way to the bottom and somehow manage to survive then you have to climb all the way back up to where you were and beyond.

But that's not to say the only reason Peak is enjoyable is the friends you play it with, although that may help. Peak is a game that showcases the best that both studios Landfall and Aggro Crab have to offer: creepy co-op fun that encourages creative problem-solving. It runs well—at least if you play using DX12 and not Vulcan, which boils my PC and crashes my games—and has responsive controls, plus the sound you make while climbing is oddly satisfying.

Peak is a fantastically crafted game and a great approach to problem-solving which absolutely thrives in multiplayer. It's fantastic value for money, probably the best I've come across so far this year. If you're looking for a new co-op staple to enjoy with friends, this should be at the top of your list.