I love climbing things in games. But I don’t always love games that are firmly climbing. Games that are firmly about climbing are often too technical for me – they tangle me up with ropes and pitons and tricky physics systems. Too many systems. Too many meters to manage. When climbing games are at their most arcadey – say something like Jusant, or Grow Home – I’m in, thoroughly in. But the best climbing I’ve ever had in a game was probably in Crackdown, and that’s an action game that just happens to let you stick to walls and ledges. The best climbing until now, anyway.
PeakPublisher: Aggro Crab, LandfallDeveloper: LandcrabPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on PC.
Peak is a climbing game. It’s firmly about climbing and it’s wonderful. And I’m happy to report it’s also got some of the best things to climb in all of games. It’s a game about climbing a mountain, alone or with three friends. I’ve been playing it solo, and I’m properly in love.
I gather Peak started life in a game jam. This makes total sense. It’s silly and knockabout, as a lot of game jam games can be. It feels like something of a lark. But also, underneath all that, it’s been pared back in a way that only a 48-hour deadline or something similar can allow for. There’s one meter for you to manage in Peak, and it’s audaciously, brilliantly simple. It’s your stamina meter. It goes down when you’re climbing, until there’s nothing left and you fall off the mountain. It builds up again when you’re resting or walking on flat surfaces, so you can have the juice to go climbing again.
So far, it’s the stamina meter from Zelda. And that’s great. But Peak’s particular stamina meter is a little bit better. You wear a backpack in Peak, with any items you’ve collected stowed in it. Cor, climbing in a backpack’s going to take it out of you, right? So a little part of your meter will be unavailable and marked with a backpack. That’s the stamina for climbing that you don’t have because you’re carrying things.