Co-op climbing game PEAK is a truly great time with friends

PEAK is another in the list of quality co-op chaos games to add to your collection. From Landfall and AGGRO CRAB, it's an online co-op climbing game with some floaty silly physics and currently one of the most popular multiplayer games on Steam.

We've seen a fair amount of cheap and janky chaotic online co-op games releasing over the last year, and this just might be one of the best. I picked up a personal copy recently to add to my list next to R.E.P.O to play with a few friends, and we've ended up really loving the experience. Good for a somewhat younger audience too (teens+) I would say, as I've also been playing it a fair bit with my own smaller human who has also been thoroughly enjoying it with me.

So what's it all about? Climbing. Obviously. You and friends go and board a plane, which unfortunately crashes leaving you all stranded. So you've got nothing to do but recover some luggage and climb.

But it's also a lot more than that. It's about the power of friendship to help each other laugh and struggle through it because it is a real challenge. To help you climb ever-higher through different biomes, there's lots of items to find in all that luggage scattered across the map. From bottles of water to really stupid items, there's a lot of ways to approach how you're going to attempt to reach the peak.

There's different types of luggage to find from standard boxes to open that may have some food, rope, a rope cannon and other items to ancient luggage that will contain all sorts of weird treats.

What's really just generally clever about it is how mechanically simple it actually is as a whole. There's not a lot of gameplay elements to it, but the developers have really maximised what they're doing with it. The generation of the island is also one that will keep it feeling fresh for a long time, as you get an entirely new place to climb every 24 hours.

As you progress you'll also earn badges depending on how far you get, or what you manage to discover. These badges then unlock new cosmetics for you to customise your climber and you can make your character look pretty hilarious with the facial features.

One especially interesting feature that's really core to the gameplay is the stamina bar. If you've played the newer open-world Zelda games, you'll be familiar with it. Climbing reduces your stamina the longer you go, until you eventually fall. However, here it's also combined with the health system into one single bar. This bar fills up with hunger, weight from carrying items, poison, sleepiness and more to reduce your overall stamina. But you can fill it back up with various items you find. So it's a constant tossup between using different items at different times to maximise that stamina.

I mentioned this whole power of friendship thing, which is where the fun really begins. Each of you will have a different amount of max stamina depending on your current status, so all those items will come in use. One with more stamina can climb higher and set down a rope for others, or stand at the top to grab you before you fall. Or, be incredibly unhelpful like me and accidentally push people off — woops.

Even with the hours we've played, I still feel like we're only scratching the surface and the developers keep expanding it too with plans for even more to content to come.

You don't actually need friends to play it though, you can climb through it entirely solo, although it's far more interesting to play with others.

It works great on Desktop Linux with Proton, although the controller support is a bit odd at times. Other than that, one of the easiest recommendations I've ever made. Really entertaining.