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Pretty Good Hat

I am so looking forward to this game: Cairn is a realistic-ish climbing game with a layer of survival and resource management mechanics, and it feels really good to play, right down to the calming breath from a bomber hold to the Elvis-leg twitching you get from holding too long on a sketchy, fatigued toe edge.

Screenshot of a climber on a steep face, viewed from above. She is leading a rope down into the shadow of the white and gray cliff, to a little robot belayer.

After a hard pitch, you can roll out your little bivvy sack, cook some instant noodles with your ultralight stove, and sleep with a view of the stars. It’s delightful and a perfect depiction of dirtbag climber downtime.

Screenshot from the game Cairn, showing a climber sleeping in a tent. Her harness is hung by the opening and a small stove hangs from the frame. It looks cozy and messy, a perfect dirtbag climber scene. Through the window and open flap is a distant mountain range.

You have to manage food, water, and consumables like climbing chalk that give you a temporary boost, and at one point in the demo I had to rappel all the way down several crags to fill my water bottles and spend my meager few coins on a packet of fruit chews – I just hoped it would fill my energy meter enough to get back to, and then finish, the final long pitch of the climb. I had barely enough food energy to make it to the top, and when I finally topped out, doubled over from the effort, exhaustion and hunger, it felt like an amazing triumph.

Screenshot from Cairn, showing my climber, having reached the top of a high cliff, doubled over from fatigue and pain. The view is from above and shows her lead rope trailing down a narrow chimney of rock, with ledges receding into the far distance.

I knew this game sounded familiar, and I found Riley MacLeod’s great writeup of the demo from a couple months back, which I’m sure I read at the time. The demo now has a mode that lets the player somewhat-gracefully select the limb to move, which I found I needed when I got myself into tricky, awkward positions on the wall. This game looks like something special and I can’t wait for its full release to see how it handles things like expedition-length trips – route finding for resupply drops, heck yes! – and what it does with the hints of story found in the demo.

Cairn screenshot showing a craggy set of cliffs. The cliffs are illustrated with dotted lines of multiple colors showing routes that I took up and down them. Screenshot from the game Cairn, looking up at a stone cliff where a climber hangs from a rope.

My week in riding the bike: I was under the weather after a few long, in-person work days last week. Improving early this week, I started up slow but built to feeling really good for this morning’s dawnbreaker HIIT and Hills thumper.

An info card showing a Low Impact ride with instructor Denis Morton. He is photographed standing against a wall of light and dark blue brick.

A share card showing my heart rate for a Sweat Steady Peloton ride with instructor Jess King, dated February 14. My heart rate steadily climbs through the ride.

A share image for a HIIT and Hills ride on the Peloton, led by Robin Arzon. Her photograph is against a black background. This ride features a lot of high heart rate time.

A lot of things are kind of garbage right now, but I have this espresso pretty dialed in, and it tastes like graham crackers and dark chocolate. That’s delightful.

Enduring my first bad cold for a while (not covid, fortunately, because In This House We Test) and mostly staying away from the family, so I’m eating the last crumby bits of Ruffles out of the bag by myself, and pouting.

I started playing Caves of Qud this weekend. It feels like a retro-throwback Rogue combined with an amazing amount of procedurally generated complexity and narrative depth. I keep dying. I’ll make another run.

Light shines on a hardwood floor in my living room. The photo shows my legs in light red colored pants with my Steam Deck on my lap. The Deck is showing the Caves of Qud opening screen. On the arm of the bright red-orange chair is a cup of coffee. Out of focus in the background, my black dog lies in her bed.

I’m made bereft and numb at seeing the first executive orders that would deny my daughter’s identity, to punish her and chase her from the world. I don’t think I ever get over the way so many Americans chose meanness and cruelty over letting people be. Take care and look for peace, friends.