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A rising Peak lifts all boats as climbing sim Cairn breaks 500k demo downloads after endorsement from mountaineering megahit Peak's devs

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One of those actual feel-good stories.

Poisoned and dying
(Image credit: Aggro Crab, Landfall)

Time for some good news for a change: After blowing past two million copies sold in just two days, the devs of climbing game Peak have shown some love to fellow mountaineering sim Cairn, and it seems to have paid off big time.

The mutual love fest began on X, "The Everything App," with Cairn developers The Game Bakers showing a clip featuring Peak's Bing Bong implemented as an item in Cairn. Bing Bong is an already-memefied plushie you have to carry from the beginning of Peak all the way to the end for an achievement. It's reminiscent of Gnome Chompski the Garden Gnome from Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

Peak co-developer Landfall Games responded by declaring that "Cairn might be peak." The next day, June 27th, The Game Bakers announced that Cairn had surpassed 500,000 downloads of its demo. Cairn is a quality game on its own to earn such attention, but the love from Landfall, plus Peak bringing so much attention to climbing games, was no doubt helpful.

It's great to see Peak's success bolstering a fellow independent developer, and they're very different sorts of climbing game. Both have a simulationist, survival focus on fatigue, resource, and weight management, but while Peak leans into co-op slapstick, Carin is a singleplayer, more meditative sort of game.

It's also laser-focused on the mechanics of climbing itself, with players needing to manually move each limb to set hand and footholds. It's way more intuitive than it sounds, though⁠—slightly reminiscent of QWOP, but nowhere near as frustrating. PC Gaming Show editorial director Jake Tucker said Cairn might be the best climbing game he ever played.

You can check out Cairn's demo for yourself on Steam ahead of its November 5 release, while Peak can be had for a mere eight bucks on Steam. You can check out PCG news writer Elie Gold's 86% review of Peak if its explosive success hasn't sold you on the game yet.

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Ted Litchfield
Associate Editor

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.

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