The Game Bakers has been putting in good work for years now with eye-catching indie games like Furi and Haven. One of the studio’s core strengths is the ability to go from a genre into an entirely one with shocking ease. Mountain-climbing sim Cairn is yet another glowing example of that, and it appears its sales numbers are reflecting the critical praise.
On 1st February, the studio announced that its latest game, which launched on 29th January, had crossed an important milestone (considering its size and somewhat niche pitch): in barely over three days since it hit digital storefronts across PC and PS5, it has sold over 200,000 copies.
That’s no small feat considering the marketing campaign has been restrained and the game contains no tried-and-tested, trend-y hooks for indies like roguelite elements or online co-op. However, its proposal was backed by the studio’s successful previous works plus Jusant and Baby Steps getting the more curious crowd into a climbing mood recently.
The Steam data (it’s also available via GOG and Epic) backs this narrative up as well, with the game currently sitting at the 9th spot of Global Top Sellers (it’s gone up and down inside the top 10) and also conquering the 4th spot in Wishlist Activity. Concurrent players peaked at almost 15,000 over the weekend. Again, it’s pretty significant considering we’re looking at a single-player adventure with very a specific set of mechanics and rhythm. The sort of stuff that makes us hopeful about the industry’s future in spite of, well, everything else.
Though there’s been no confirmation of Xbox or Nintendo Switch 2 versions at the time of writing, it appears the self-published studio is quite happy with the results already, so we’re hoping that means it’ll reach more platforms in the future.
