QCF: CAIRN

We all have a vision in our heads of something that we love doing beyond any reproach. A passion that we put on a pedestal, and fabricate this perfect version of what we aspire it to be, and when that drive reaches a fever point, no one else will ever understand your vision. Not family, not friends, and not even colleagues who share your love of the avocation at hand. Everything else starts to lose meaning—or worse yet—become a hindrance between you and the focus you need to lock the hell in for to achieve the goal at large.

Even though we’re all capable of that intense dedication to something we love, there’s a big gulf between someone striving to be the world’s best bowler and someone trying to be the first Alpinist to reach the top of the world’s only unclimbable mountain. A new survival-action title from the same folks who brought us Furi, in CAIRN, from The Game Bakers, aims to challenge the limits of human tenacity, both through the lens of Aava and the personal state of mind she finds herself in, and the symbiotic level of perseverance that players will need to guide her to the peak.

As simple as that all sounds, it’s the execution of CAIRN’s buildup and turbulent framing of Aava’s quest to surmount Mount Kami that sets it apart as an experience that’s unlike anything I’ve played before it—an experience that constantly teeters between being a tale of inspiration and a cautionary tale of self-destruction.

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QCF: Everybody's Gone To The Rapture

s the scene fades in, you stumble out into the tranquil beauty of the Yaughton countryside in Shropshire, England—investigating the irony of an environment that’s devoid of all human life, and yet breaming with the vibrancy of nature itself is the only thing that keep the unsettling tone from escalating into anything that.

This is the landscape of The Chinese Room’s latest adventure game, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, a disorienting mystery behind the disappearance of an entire village, and the grisly clues that have been left behind—it’s an experience that will leave you thinking, and somewhat shaken.

From the people behind the atmospheric voyage of Dear Esther, the independent studio places a different spin on the apocalypse concept that no other title has slowed down enough to explore in great detail—the human condition.

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