The Climb

The Climb is a first-person virtual reality game, developed by Crytek and Oculus Studios. In it the player climbs cliffs in locations around the world. The game released for Microsoft Windows on April 28, 2016, while a Oculus Quest port was later released in 2019. A sequel, The Climb 2, was released in 2021. Gameplay The player's task is to climb up to a summit using Oculus Touch, moving their hands to grab the next ledge. Both hands have independent stamina-meters, which deplete if the player is only holding on with one hand - the player may attempt to hold the trigger half-way to maintain a grip without losing stamina, at the risk of accidentally letting go. To increase available stamina, the player may chalk their hands to maintain grip, which they can do by holding a button and shaking the controller, but this motion requires the player to let go their grip with that hand. If the player reaches a gap too big to the climb across, they can push themselves off the ledge to jump across. Paths occasionally branch out; the player also may press a button to display a hint for a possible path towards the goal. Paths occasionally contain dangling carabiners which serve as checkpoints, should the player fall off, and each map has two in-between resting platforms the player can stand on without a grip which also pause the timer. Later ("advanced") maps contain additional hazards: Toxic Grips that temporarily lower the maximum stamina, Crumbling Grips that only last a few seconds, Technical Grips that are smaller ledges that deplete stamina faster, and Dirty Grips that are covered by rocks which the player needs to brush off with the controller before they're able to maintain a grip on it. Some levels contain additional elements such as ladders and ziplines, as well as unusual grips like a giant mammoth skull's tusks sticking out of a block of ice, or a downed airplane's propellers. The game features four different environments: Bay, Canyon, Alps and North. Each of these contains five levels which are: Easy, Medium, and Hard, alongside two bouldering maps: bouldering maps are shorter but more difficult, with chalking and path hinting both disabled. The Climb additionally has an endless mode called "Practice Wall", that randomly generates sections of an infinite wall for the player to climb.