Cover photo from Cairn.

Greetings, dear reader. We’re finally starting to emerge from the brutally-cold winters around here, and honestly I couldn’t be more glad. I’m used to long, snowy winters (I grew up with them) but even after living here for years now, I’m still not used to how harsh and ridiculously cold it can get. It affects me and my overall mood more than I’d like to admit, so I’m welcoming Spring with open arms.

As for what games you won’t see in this month’s rundown, the most notable one is Mewgenics. I still consider it in-progress and I intend to get back to it, but as I said before that game definitely strikes me more as a marathon than a sprint. I’ve also continued to dip in and out of Helldivers II whenever duty calls.

I always like to start off strong with the game I have the most to say about, and this month that game is…

There are only a handful of games that are based primarily around climbing. I’m not simply talking about games that feature climbing as a mechanic; something like Breath of the Wild technically has it but it’s not the primary focus of the game. I’ve done top-rope climbing out in Appalachia and have been to local bouldering gyms a handful of times; I won’t claim to be an expert but I think I know the fundamentals. The thing I most distinctly remember about learning climbing techniques while top-roping was my instructor constantly telling me “get your legs up!” to get into a stronger hold or to pry the rest of my body up onto an overhang. There’s a widespread mistaken assumption among climbing novices that having a lot of raw strength is necessary to get started. It certainly helps on harder routes, but it’s far more important to have good technique and an understanding of how best to place your hands and feet so that you don’t need to rely on sheer effort on difficult moves.

Playing Cairn activated something deep inside me and all those fond memories on the rock wall came flooding back. It’s certainly the most authentic representation of climbing that I’ve seen in a video game so far, and absolutely nails the mental game that is an essential part of the sport. Half the battle on the wall is finding a route that will work for you; you have to understand what your body is capable of, where the tough moves will be, and where you can afford to hang for a bit and give your muscles a break. In Cairn you control the protagonist Aava’s limbs one-by-one, placing them into crevices and ledges as you scramble up the face of Kami, the fictional equivalent of Mt. Everest or K2. You’ll also contend with a survival layer where you’ll need to manage her hunger, thirst, and eventually also body temperature which becomes a factor as you get higher up the mountain. Aava is an experienced mountaineer (one of the best in the world, in fact) and can forage for food and water but you’ll also be able to scavenge random foodstuffs and useful tools from the bodies of the unfortunate souls who perished on the mountain long before you arrived. It’s all a lot to think about, but the game does offer accessibility features which tone down the difficulty of the climbing and/or survival elements if you so desire.

As for Aava herself, she is an experienced and confident climber who aims to be the first to summit the unconquered Mount Kami. Aava has an intense demeanor; if you watch enough interviews with people who are at the top of their sport or vocation you tend to see this kind of personality a lot and I found it to be pretty authentic in that way. She’s a bit of a mess in her personal life; it’s heavily implied early on that her relationship with her partner Naomi is in bad shape, she refuses to return her agent’s calls, and whenever she receives a message through her mechanical assistant ClimbBot she seems more annoyed than anything that her focus is taken away from her ascent. She spends so much time on mountain faces as a way of forcing the problems of her personal life to take a backseat. She’s not always likable, but she is relatable. She struggles to understand and be understood by other people and feels isolated because of it. I found her to be a compelling character, and later in the game you’ll make several important choices which impact how her story ultimately ends.

Cairn is one of those rare games that put me into a state of hyperfocus; the climbing is challenging and incredibly engrossing. Aava’s arms and legs will start to shake and she’ll start to audibly strain when losing her grip. Learning to take your climbs slow and steady and to suppress the panic when her grip starts to falter are key to success on Kami. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that this game is drop-dead gorgeous, featuring dramatic rises and incredible vistas. I’m not a guy who uses photo modes in games a lot, but I found myself stopping to snap some breathtaking shots frequently. I have so many damn screenshots — almost 200 — and choosing a handful to put on this post was legitimately tough. All in all, this was a memorable journey that will stick with me and is easily among the best game experiences I’ve had this year. It comes highly recommended.

Öoo (which I’ve been pronouncing out loud as “ooOOOoo”) is a brilliant, bite-sized puzzle game from Nama Takahashi whose previous game was ElecHead, a retro Megaman-styled puzzle platformer. I finished the entire thing in just over two hours so talking too much about the gameplay might constitute spoilers, but the concept is that you control a lil’ caterpillar dude who has been snatched up by an asshole bird, and your task is to avoid digestion by getting him out.

Our bug protagonist has the ability to drop sections of his body as bombs, and this is how you solve the majority of the game’s puzzles. You can use them as steps, to propel you in one direction or another, or one of several other techniques that the game masterfully teaches you through the quality of its level design. The controls are very simple (move with the stick, a button to place a bomb, and a button to detonate) but there are a surprising amount of moments where you realize that there are useful/necessary tricks with them that you could have performed the entire time which let you solve rooms which at a point looked impossible. In short, it’s delightful. It’s so smartly-designed, and very worth picking up for an afternoon’s worth of entertainment. Time for me to go check out ElecHead, I think…

Here I am, back again this month to give the verdict and tell you that Super Battle Golf absolutely rules. I’ve played several more sessions with friends and the game not only holds up in terms of sheer enjoyment, but also has more mechanical depth than you’d think. Turns out you can do some really wacky shit like diving in front of others’ shots Secret Service style; I’ve seen several duels between friends at the putting green that left me crying with laughter.

You can play this online with randoms, but if you’ve got a group of friends you can convince to get it, consider this a 3-star recommendation instead. More updates are coming and they’ve promised Steam Workshop integration in the future, so I can’t wait to see what kind of wild courses and new items we get. I’ll leave you with a few highlights from our most recent games.

Another bite-sized game, Many Nights a Whisper is a story-focused indie game about a world where any wish can come true, as long as a certain ritual is completed. The player controls the Dreamer, the individual at the center of said ritual. Every night, villagers visit the Dreamer and confess their deepest desires from the other side of a wall. Each villager that professes a wish puts a braid of hair they have been growing out through an opening in the wall, and if the Dreamer chooses to grant the wish they cut the braid. The Dreamer is the sole arbiter of which wishes get granted and which do not, and ultimately to make them come true they must use a slingshot to light a flame pyre on the day of the ritual. Their mentor has been training them for 10 years for this one moment, and he will talk you through both the technique of making the shot and also about which wishes you’re choosing to grant and why.

This ultimately is the main draw of the narrative. Some of the wishes are relatively low-stakes; one villager wishes for a rival to help push them to their limits in all respects. Others are much more serious and world-altering. One person asks to make all world religions vanish overnight. They also say they realize that there’s an inherent darkness in the heart of humanity that will never go away, but that eliminating organized religion might prevent lots of pain and suffering inflicted in the name of dogma. Another person confesses that they are experiencing gender dysphoria, and wants you to eliminate the whole concept of gender altogether. For both of these, you’re forced to grapple with the concept of a world without either of these prevailing forces and consider what improvements or unintended consequences could come from changing such fundamental things about humanity.

It’s fascinating stuff, and ultimately it’s up to you to grapple with these choices and decide whether or not to grant the wish. Of course, this all hinges upon you making that one consequential shot on the final day. You’ll have the Dreamer train during the daytime, in between the sequences at night where you’re hearing the wishes of the villagers. It’s also fully up to you whether you want to commit to making the shot, or perhaps you might decide that putting this much responsibility on one person is too much, and to miss it on purpose. Either way, it’s all up to you…

Final Fantasy X is certainly not among the first JRPGs I ever played, but it is one of the ones that to this day I still clearly and fondly remember. Revisiting a game that’s such a fixture in your personal pantheon can be a risky endeavor; as the years pass we tend to remember more of what we liked about certain things while the pain points slowly fade away. What I remember about FFX is being floored by its visual presentation and the fact that this was the first proper Final Fantasy to be fully voice-acted. I remember its worldbuilding being top-notch and its characters to be endearing and memorable. Yuna is one of my favorite characters in the whole series and I consider her to be the pinnacle of the archetype of the Final Fantasy Summoner.

I’m pleased to say that the game mostly holds up so far. I’m keeping in mind that in 2001, localizations were generally quite rough and the trade of voice acting for games was still in its relative infancy. It’s still leaps and bounds beyond many of its contemporaries and immediate predecessors, and its turn-based battle system is still one of my favorites. You can see a lot of the DNA of more modern RPG battle systems (most notably the Atlus SMT and Persona games) here, and they liberally borrow elements of FFX for good reason. My partner is watching while I play this (this is her first time seeing the game) and we’ve just hit Macalania Temple. Once I’ve rolled credits I’ll report back on how well I think it holds up as an entire work and what she thought about it as well.