Cairn is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, an emotionally gripping story accompanied by the best approximation of rock climbing I've seen in a video game. This was no accident on the part of The Game Bakers, who meticulously placed every single rock to ensure climbing routes were navigable and made sense to the player.
In a detailed post on Art Station, Cairn's technical art director, Anthony Beyer, detailed the process of creating Cairn's hundreds of climbing routes.
"[The] player needs to read/understand climbing routes as much as possible, even at a 50M distance. Geometry is very important here, we can't fake it," the post reads. "Besides modelling, all interesting cracks/holds are flagged manually in the Wall Editor. We can tell that an edge of the mesh can be grabbed in a certain way by a limb, it's a climbing configuration."
Beyer adds, "The level art team did crazy work modelling all of these," describing each of the game's various holds. In fact, "It's all hand-placed, nothing procedural. It's the perfect mix between level design and art."
The depth of textures in Cairn gives the player an inherent understanding of where Ava can place her...
