Cairn Walkthrough – Training Facility

Cairn is a survival-climbing adventure game developed and published by The Game Bakers (creators of Furi and Haven). Released on January 29, 2026 for PC and PlayStation 5, Cairn challenges players to ascend the deadly, never-before-summited Mount Kami in a deeply immersive, realistic rock-climbing experience. In this part of the walkthrough we cover the climb through the training facility and Tenzen.

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Day 1: Training Facility

Once you start the game, select your difficulty level. This walkthrough is played on the easiest difficulty setting. The game will then play out the introductory cutscenes. You will be with Ava next and will have to climb three practice walls.

Climbing in Cairn is dependent on two factors – your stamina and your hold quality. The game cycles through all 4 limbs – your right hand, left hand, left leg and right leg. You need to move the selected limb and place it on various rocks, holds and surfaces that you are climbing. If your hold is good once a limb has been placed you will lose less stamina than you would if your hold was iffy. It is a good idea to have atleast 3 good holds to be effective.

Pro Tip: If you hold R1/Space down you can manually select which limb to move.

If you are having trouble go to settings and turn on “Highlight Limbs” and “Holds feedback”. These two assist options will light up which limb is selected and if the hold you get with that hand is good or not.

Also notice that you can cancel a hold or last action during the climb.

Pro Tip: Be patient. You need to advance or grab the next ledge or hold immediately. You can stay level and ensure that all your holds are solid before planning your next move.

Climb all three walls and if you want to do advance training you can do so on walls 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. (Doing so unlocks a box in the room, but at the time of writing I was only able to complete till 6 of 8 walls.)

Pick up the small bottle and the loose change near Wall # 2.

Next open up your backpack and you will see that there is an inventory management mini game.

You can use the coins on the vending machine near the north wall to buy one food item.

When climbing, remember Ava can stretch if you hold the direction down. This works better the better your footing is.

Next up on the 3^rd wall you will learn how to use Pitons and to replenish your stamina by using “Off-belay”. Simple tutorial for that. So finish the climb now. If you climb to the top of wall #3, you can find a Tenzen keepsake to hang from your backpack.

Once you are done, climb out of the training facility. My route is below –

Save at the Bivouac on the right once you get up. Pick up the raspberries from near the stone where the bivouac is. Go straight up ahead and fill up your empty bottle from the stream.

Day 1: Tenzen

Save at bivouac and then check the next part of the ascent out with the remote view feature. Next start the climb on the bit to the left. This was my path up –

As you walk up the mountain, you will see a small cave like structure to your left. You can find eggs and Honey dippers here.

You can see my route here –

For the next bit of the climb up this was my route.

At the top go to the left and save at bivouac. I went to the far left and picked the climbing spot there. Its always a good idea to pick surfaces with a lot of hand holds. This was my route up –

At the end of this climb, you will have climbed Tenzen and be ready for Kami.

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