Peak: Climbing and Falling With Friends

Original co-op games are some of my favorites to check out with friends. Recently, fellow SUPERJUMP writer Taylor and I had a chance to play the game Peak from developers Aggrocrab and Landfall (who worked on Peak as a joint venture known appropriately as LandCrab). Peak is a roguelike climbing adventure for up to four friends who don’t fear heights or working together. If you don’t mind some stumbling (and falling) along the way, this is a great game for a group.

Josh

For me, Peak feels like a step above the many platformer party games, where the controls are often very janky; here, you need to get really good at movement if you want to have any chance at winning.

Taylor

This game reminds me a lot of the few parkour-type games I’ve played in terms of mechanics. There is a lot of climbing, a lot of falling, and a little bit of timing. How high you can climb will depend on how full your backpack is, how hungry you are, whether or not you’ve walked yourself right into a poisoned plant, or even whether or not you’ve already died once (or twice). 

Josh

There is certainly a lot that must happen during a run for you and your team to stand a chance at winning. As we were talking about after a game, I don’t know how one person is supposed to win solo, given that you can only hold at most 7 items, including a backpack.

Taylor

The playthrough may be most successful with a team of three to four players. It can feel like a struggle bus with two, and I couldn't imagine trying to get through the whole map solo, given the limitations of how many items you can carry at a time, as well as afflictions and effects that can wreak havoc on your stamina over time. Got too hungry? You aren't going to be able to progress. Not on your own, at least.

When you're just shy of having enough stamina to get you up the next ledge, your friend can offer you a helping hand to pull you up that last little bit. Peak emphasizes never leaving your comrades behind. If you do, there can be some interesting consequences. 

Josh

Although climbing and all of a sudden seeing the ghosts of your friends right in your face can deliver some hilarity 🙂

What did you think about the 24-hour reset of the map? 

Taylor

I actually loved the 24-hour reset of the map. I think it increased the game's playability on a massive scale. Even if you complete the game, you're given an entirely new challenge the very next day. That aspect alone has streamers left, right and centre playing this game almost every day. It's like it has quickly become its own little niche! 

Josh

I’m surprised by how well the game is doing, and I think Team Peak is as well. We’ve had a really good run of innovative multiplayer experiences. It’s a very smart use of a roguelike-ish approach. In a way, it reminds me of how much you can get out of the map generations of Deep Rock Galactic, as a lot of your play is dependent on the other players rather than just adding more to the maps themselves.

Taylor

The actual dependency on the other players adds an extremely fun and refreshing element to the game. Between helping you up when you’re just shy of the amount of stamina you need, a team effort in carrying important items or food, all of it speaks to what Peak’s main theme appears to be: teamwork.

Josh

I do wonder if the game will lose some of its novelty as people begin finishing it. The developers are mentioning they have some more content coming, and I wonder if we’ll see something similar to Deep Rock Galactic, where the option to spend more money is there for cosmetics and such, but the game continues to grow with new seasonal content.

Taylor

I think new seasonal content would be awesome; however, there are a lot of gamers deterred by something like microtransactions being added to popular games. It would be great for the developers to be able to earn extra revenue for a fun, affordable game, but I wonder if it would hurt them at all in the long run. 

Josh

My worry about a game like this is whether or not there will be a player base the initial buzzy period when it's new and being featured by streamers. If you can’t find people to play with, or have friends wanting to play, as we said, you can’t really do it solo. The idea itself is still ingenious, and I hope that we see more developers inspired to make an original multiplayer game that’s not about ghosts or horror 🙂

Taylor

That’s actually a great point, too. I personally know a lot of people who will be hyped up about a new game for the first month, and then they drop it for something else that’s new. I think it would be good to keep the game fresh with new updates, and a new map every day is a great start. Hopefully, it lives past the first buzz, because as you just said, and what we sort of talked about earlier, trying to get to the top of this peak as a solo would be next to impossible. 

Josh

Looking at the store page, the game is definitely a success sales-wise, and I’m happy that the team has hit a home run with it. I would like to see how it fares with a full party and the craziness that can come from it. I can see how they could expand things with more peaks, more biomes, and of course, more items to try and figure out how they work.

Taylor

Definitely; I think the addition of new and useful items would be a huge bonus. Also, it would be interesting to see them lean a bit more into the comedic value of the game as well. It has the element, but it could be expanded on just a little, I think. 

Josh

With a bit more reason to keep coming back, I think Peak could be an amazing game-night game, and for anyone reading this, if you have at least one other friend whom you would climb a mountain with, then you need to try this.

Taylor

I couldn’t agree more. The game is affordable, and the gameplay is good – grab your friends and climb a mountain together! There’s so much fun to be had with this one.