Forget REPO And Crab Game, Peak Is By Far The Best Viral Game I've Played

I don't o𒁃ft♓en go for the viral 'games of the week' that have become more prevalent over the last couple of years. You know the ones I'm talking about — relatively simple multiplayer mechanics, goofy aesthetics, a gameplay loop that lends itself well to hijinx, and of course, proximity chat.

The caveat with these games is that most people don't play them for very long; you might get a couple of sessions of side-splitting fun with friends before the novelty wears off. They start to gather dust in your libraries, unplayed for several years, until someone suggests dusting them off for a game night, and you relive the hilarity once more. Some people have𒁏 taken to calling these g🎀ames 'friendslop', though that's selling a few of them short.

However, something about the latest game in vogue, Peak, drew me in. Seeing the silly-looking characters pull one another up mountains was enough for me to instantly buy♈ the game and start convincing my friends to do the same.

Teamwork, Dream Work, Etc.

Four people climbing below the camera in Peak.

The objective of Peak is simple💛: as a team, you climb through the game's various biomes until you reach the very top of the mountain, the titular peak. Your character is limited by its stami✨na, which dwindles with various status effects like hunger, poison, injuries and so on. Basically, the worse shape you're in, the less distance you can climb at once.

In this case, climbing is a team sport. You can hoist teammates onto ledges you're standing on, throw down ropes, revive unconscious climbers, a꧂nd so on.

Af🥀ter several hours with the game, I've decided: Peak is the ultimate team building exercise. You will inevitably feel closer to your teammates as you struggle up t💛he mountain together. My group even adopted a motto: no man left behind (within reason).

Regardless of the extreme circumstances we found ourselves in, we would endeavour to down-climb to pick up unconscious teammates, and generally work to ensure that everyone made it to the next campfire alive. This ideal would have to be abandoned on the rare occasion someone went careening off the edge, falling 300 metres to their untimely demise at the bottom♚ of a ravine, but for the most part, we stuck to our guns.

This ethos often resulted in some pretty heroic moments. Proximity chat means that communication is often spotty. On one occasion, a friend mistakenly began climbing an alternate route with the expectation that all of us were following him, only ✱to find himself marooned and alone.

No Man Left Behind (Within Reason)

We decided to split up, sending two people after our missing friend and two people ahead to camp to revive us if we all died on our mission. We climbed downward for several minutes, calling out for our missing companion. Ju🌱st as we had lost hope, we heard a faint voice in the distance cry, "I'm alive!".

Although Peak is limited t𝔉o four players, someone's already made a mod that allows you to 'break' this limit, and it works surprisingly well.

We descended lower and peeked (hah) over the edge, and there he was, clutching one of our old rope cannons with approximately five per cent stamina. He had backtracked to where he had last seen us, but ran into trouble with poison bushes and various accumulated falling injuries. We returned to a hero's welcome at camp — the team lived to scale a✨nother cliff.

That's the thing about Peak: it strikes the perfect balance between being unserious and being incredibly high-stakes. It's sad when a friend slips from their hold (especially in the final section where they can't be r༒evived before the end). But watching their character plummet as you hear their heart-wrenching "Noooo!" becoming fainter and fainter is some of the most fun I've had in gaming, period.

I've done three or four runs, having reached the final section on two occasions. I've yet to reach the peak myself, but two of my teammates succeeded in doing so on our last run. It's difficult to say how much more I'll get out of Peak, but even though we "finished" the game, I'🍌m still eager to get back on the mountain, which is a promising sign. There's also potential for new maps in the future, which I'm sure Aggro Crab and Landfall are considering.

Peak is a delightfully simple experience. Its brief stint atop Steam's best-sellers list illustrates that it can be incredibly difficult to predict what will click with players and what won’t. A ten-year-in-the-making triple-A can flop spectacularly, while something like Peak can become a smas👍h hit overnight.

Aggro Crab acknowledged this phenomenon in a social media post, , "W🅷hy did 🌺this stupid jam game sell more copies than another crab's treasure, I'm gonna crash out."

There is never an accurate predictor of success in gaming, not even a good idea well executed. Budget, the studio's pedigree, the genre, the IP — nothing can guarantee a hit game, but sometimes you strike gold with a si🅠mple idea. I think the success of Peak is beautiful, and perhaps one day I'll see that peak m✤yself.