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Reaching the mountaintop (Gamescom) - Cairn Interview with The Game Bakers co-founder
We caught up with Audrey Leprince during our time at Gamescom to learn all about The Game Bakers' upcoming next effort, the climbing adventure game Cairn.
Audio transcription
"Welcome back to Gamereactor's coverage of Gamescom 2024. We have seen a lot of games and some of them unique and some of them more like run-of-the-mill, but I would say this one is kind of unique, especially in its attention to detail and realism. It's a climbing game, it's called Cairn, and I'm here with Audrey Leprince, the producer on the game, who's going to tell us more about the game. So yeah, could you briefly introduce the game?
Yeah, Cairn is a survival climber where you are playing as Aava, a professional climber, who's trained really hard to reach the summit that's never been reached before. That's going to be the game, your ascent toward that summit."
"Yeah, and of course you can climb in a lot of games, but these games really take it to the next level in terms of realism. So could you explain a bit about how the actual climbing mechanics works? Well, the idea is that we want it to be as natural and immersive as possible, so basically you can just go anywhere, you can climb anywhere. So you're going to look at the mountain and you're going to decide your way and you're going to try this way and it might work. And it's very simple to climb, you just have to press one button and push on the stick up and then you're going to move your limbs very naturally, but it doesn't mean it's easy. It's still very tiring, you have to make sure you have a good balance and you manage your stamina. This is to make it to the top of each wall and of course in between there's all the survival elements that kick in and you're going to have to make sure your health, your hydration, your food, your rest is taken into account to make it to the top of that huge mountain. Yeah, some very steep climbs and obviously as I say you can move your limbs, but you also have some tools in your backpack that you can use. Can you tell us a bit about these tools? Yes, you have a natural safe point kind of, which is the piton, the things that you're going to drill in the wall and then you hang your rope on it and then you can finally rest a little bit of your weight and of course if you climb then you're caught up because you won't fall so much and so that's a very very useful tool that every climber uses, I guarantee. And of course you also carry your equipment so you're gonna have ways to be work like maybe a little tent, you're gonna be able to cook food, you're gonna be able to heal yourself and that's about it in terms of equipment. You also have some special like magnesia, you know the puff that helps you adhere better to the wall, but that's about it. It's really a realistic climbing experience so good luck with the mountain. Yeah and you mentioned these kind of survival elements, what dangers besides the tall climbs will you face when you go up the mountain?
So the mountain she's trying to climb is higher than Mount Everest, so the highest mountain on planet Earth, so of course it's gonna get harder and harder. So here in the demo that you played it's like sunny and nice and there's birds and everything but of course as you climb you're gonna face the weather, you're gonna face the night, you're gonna face the cold, the ice, the passages that are crumbling and you know the dangers of the high-level altitude mountain. So there's gonna be a lot of dangers, stay alive. Yeah, can you use, if you want to like try climbing yourself, can you use any of the techniques in the game for like scaling a cliff yourself? Actually yeah, it's exactly the way you climb and we've worked with climbers. So because we use a complete body simulation, the physics and the real mathematics of how your body moves in the mountain, it's really the same. The only difference is that Ava is a pro climber, she's really strong and she's really flexible, so some stuff she does don't try at home, yeah."
"Yeah and in terms of this character Ava, can you tell us a little bit more about her without spoiling her whole story? Yeah, well she's the reason why we made this game. We really wonder, I don't know if you've met anyone before that is a climber, but those guys they go as a sport, they risk their lives in the mountain and then they go and they do it again and it's painful and they still do it again. So we were wondering why are people so driven to do something so hard and so dangerous and this is something that really talks to us and that's what the character is about. It's why do you do that and the feeling of freedom that you get when you like overcome something super difficult. You get it in climbing, you get it in the game too, so this is the story of Ava. Yeah, so obviously a lot of dangers, a lot of hardships, but it's also a very beautiful, beautiful looking game. It's got some great sound. Can you tell us a bit more about the art direction and the sound? Yeah, we are working with a superstar team on this one. For art direction and story we have Mathieu Babelais, who is a French comic book artist, who is super talented and on the audio team we have Martin Stig Andersen from Inside, Limbo, Control and Julian Lenz from Cocoon, who are doing the audio design and the music. So I think we have one of the best audio teams in the indie world to be honest. Some really talented folks working on this."
"Yeah, is the mountain based on any real-life locations that you have visited? No, it's a whole new world to discover, a whole new adventure. It's as usual with our games, Fury or Heaven, it's a world that is close to the real world but different in many ways. You should expect some nice surprises in that mountain. In terms of how long it's gonna take you to get to the top of this huge mountain, for like the average player who is maybe new to this kind of game, how long do you think it will take to complete the game? We're not sure exactly yet because we haven't tested the whole mountain yet but we think it's gonna take you about 12 hours if you try to go straight. So 12 hours in real time and in the game time maybe several days. But of course the mountain has many things to explore. Maybe you've seen some of them in the demo already and if you want to explore everything and discover all the secrets and find all the cool stuff you can loot and figure out what happened to that expedition there, remnants there, it's gonna take you much longer. Yeah, and you mentioned that the game has like several days. Is there like a dynamic time of day system and can you climb during the night? Yeah, it's completely dynamic, completely realistic."
"The weather is dynamic, the cycle of night and day is dynamic. You get beautiful sunsets but you can also get horrible rainy nights on the cliff and then you have to decide, do you stop and camp and wait for a better weather? But what if you're tired? What if you're running low on food? Yeah, and you told me you worked on this game since your last game Haven shipped in since 2021. So obviously a lot of development, a lot of work have gone into it. What has been like the major challenges so far? No question, it's the climbing system. To make a realistic climbing system like that that you saw with all of your weight calculated and all the forces in presence when she's pushing on walls and climbing even like that, that's been the hardest. It's still something we're working on and work on until the end. Definitely never had something so hard to develop before."
"Yeah, and my final question is when is the game gonna release and on which platforms can you play it? It's gonna release next year. It's gonna come to PC and consoles and towards the end of this year you might be able to get your hands on a demo on Steam. Thank you for the talk and good luck with the game. Thank you so much."
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