One of the great joys in my life is having a video game date with my long-distance friend, “A.” On and off for the past several years, we have gone through phases of having a standing weekly hangout on the internet.
For a long time, our go-to was Destiny 2. We especially loved Gambit mode, as it was a good mix of PvE (player versus environment) and PvP (player versus player). Furthermore, weapons and armor were auto-leveled, meaning it was just skill vs. skill. The matches lasted about 15 minutes, making it easy to pick up and put down. We’d run around shooting aliens, catching up on the phone at the same time about our lives. I treasure those memories.
After years of joy, we have officially fallen off of Destiny 2 completely. Bungie started to go overboard with the updates. It was hard to keep track of quest changes, new power additions, or the meta around weapons. In our regular lives, A. and I also kept moving, and it was harder and harder to schlep our once-beloved Xbox Ones around. We both got Steam Decks, and we’ve been looking for something to take Destiny 2′s place.
We thought about returning to Don’t Starve, a spooky survival co-op game, but we could never last for very long. I told her how much I enjoyed playing on a Stardew Valley farm with my mom and sister, but that didn’t capture our alien-shooting imagination. We tried the free Sheepherds! demo, which was good, too, but not quite what we were looking for. We were loath to pay too much money for anything in case we didn’t like it. There was one new indie game we kept considering: PEAK.
A. had seen PEAK on a list, and I had been hearing good chatter, too, though to be honest, I really didn’t know much about it. All I really wanted to do was chat and goof off with my friend. So, we paid $7.99 for PEAK on Steam and figured we could return it if it didn’t work out.
It has, unequivocally, worked out.
Finding Joy in the Climb
PEAK is an absolutely delightful co-op climbing game, released this summer by Team PEAK, a result of two indie developer-publishers Aggro Crab and Landfall joining forces. (The game itself has a really interesting production story — it almost got cancelled!) Players crash-land on a mysterious island that gets newly generated every several hours. Each level has the same basics, but because of this, it means the best way up is never the same.
In PEAK, you and up to three friends can play together. You start on a beach with access to a few items, like a flare or a bag of trail mix or, my personal favorite, Bing Bong, a strange green stuffed animal that is the doomed airline’s mascot. He says depressing catch phrases when you squeeze him, like, “NoooOOooOo” or “I miss my wife.” He doesn’t do anything as far as I can tell, but I always pick him up, give him a squeeze, and bring him along as far as I can.
PEAK understands something quintessential: that life’s mountains — literal and metaphorical — are more fun with a friend.
After you stock up on as many coconuts as you can carry, you move across the beach until you get to the cliff faces. Then, it’s time to climb. The goal is to get to the peak of a mountain on the island, traversing a variety of levels, though A. and I have only gotten to level 2, a treacherous forest area with steep drops and fewer resources.
It’s absolutely critical to collaborate with your companion. Players lose energy while climbing, meaning you could be inches away from the top, slide down, and die — but if you reach out behind you to help the next person up, it makes all the difference. It’s the epitome of that saying, To go fast, go alone; to go far, go together.
You have to coordinate stashing bandages and snacks like Big Lollipop or Fortified Milk in your sole, shared backpack. Those two snacks are especially exciting as you’ll glow a shimmery rainbow, fueled by sugar and protein highs. You also might find a balloon, which, as far as I can tell, is just something fun to carry around with you. Delight like this is infused throughout the game, whether it be the loading lobby area that includes basketball and chess, or dung beetles that knock you over, or, again, Bing Bong.
We paid $7.99 for PEAK on Steam and figured we could return it if it didn’t work out. It has, unequivocally, worked out.
PEAK was released in July 2025, but it’s getting new updates all the time. For example, on our most recent playthrough, we exclaimed in a panic when a spider dropped down from a redwood tree and scooped A. up into the sky. I threw mushrooms up, ineffectively, trying to knock her down. Even when playing on easy mode, we may avoid zombies (which results in hilarious videos like the one below from one of the developers), but we have never gotten anywhere close to winning, much less surviving.
You have to manage energy levels and health. It’s incredibly easy to fall off a cliff, fall off a tree, walk into a poison urchin, eat a poison mushroom, walk into a poison puddle… You get it. It is so easy to die — and that’s so freaking fun. When you die in PEAK, your character’s body rag dolls around until you eventually give up and become a ghost. We’ve started letting whoever survives longer continue, the ghost just keeping them company. Part of the reason this is so fun is because of PEAK’s in-game audio.
Historically, A. and I have always just done phone calls with each other. It’s easier to get cleaner audio, and there’s no chance of accidentally opening up a party to angry randos on the internet. But this time, our wifi struggled to handle the data of our call and the game, so we used PEAK’s in-game mic system, and I’m so glad we did.
When you use PEAK’s in-game audio, your characters’ mouths move. They are particularly derpy looking avatars, endearingly miserable and bulbous. Furthermore, when you get separated in-game, your companion actually sounds far away. When someone’s in a cavern, their voice echoes. PEAK lets me play out a fantasy of keeping up with my wilderness-ready friend; I definitely could not hike or climb a mountain at her level IRL, hahaha. But in PEAK, I’m able to shout “Marco!” and she can reply “Polo!” and we can find our ways through the swamps and mountains together.
When I play PEAK with A., I still get to catch up with her, but I also get to actively collaborate with her in a way that no other multiplayer game has done for us before. We spend time healing and feeding each other. We laugh-panic when the other dies, trying to carry the other’s silent corpse to a resurrection beacon (which we’ve never found) and then smiling when the other person finally becomes a ghost and can chat again. We discuss paths to take, both in-game and in our regular lives. We take turns trying out the random tools we find, like a Scout Cannon or a Pandora’s Lunch Box. There is such an amazing, ridiculous joy in accidentally tumbling off a mountain while my friend looks on in horror, and then trying all over again.
One thing I find particularly interesting about PEAK is that, because it’s entirely built as a live game in a shared world, there’s no save state. If you reach a certain checkpoint but log out, too bad. Your progress is lost, in part because that version of the island simply doesn’t exist anymore. As a result, my friend and I aren’t really driven by endgame progress — we’re focused purely on the present, enjoying the level, however we can, for as long as we can.
There is such an amazing, ridiculous joy in accidentally tumbling off a mountain in PEAK while my friend looks on in horror, and then trying all over again.
Come on, Game Awards!
PEAK is one of the best multiplayer games I’ve ever played, and I haven’t come anywhere close to beating it. I am an avid co-op gamer with my partner and my family and of course with A., and so you can trust me when I say that PEAK is doing something differently than popular multiplayer games like Overcooked, Fortnite, Call of Duty, Borderlands, Mario Party, and It Takes Two. Right now, PEAK is only available on PC, but I’m hoping its viral success will help it make its way to more platforms soon.
PEAK is the only game nominated in the Game Awards’ Multiplayer category that is truly innovating.
And, perhaps most of all, I hope PEAK gets the recognition it deserves this Thursday at the Game Awards, where it has been nominated for Best Multiplayer Game. Its fellow nominees are either online shooters (Arc Raiders, Battlefield 6) and/or games that are iterating on successful formulas (Elden Ring Nightreign and Split Fiction).
While I’m sure some, if not all of these entries, are great games, PEAK is the only game on that list truly innovating in multiplayer. PEAK won the Multiplayer category at the Golden Joystick Awards last week, and I hope to see it win again this Thursday.
PEAK understands something quintessential: that life’s mountains — literal and metaphorical — are more fun with a friend.
PEAK, developed and published by Aggro Crab and Landfall (together known on Steam as Team PEAK), was released on July 16, 2025, for PC (via Steam). MRSP: $7.99. Played via Steam Deck.
Amanda Tien (she/her or they) loves video games where she can pet dogs, punch bad guys, make friends, and have a good cry. She started writing for the site in 2020, and became an editor in 2022. She enjoys writing about mystery games, indies, and strong femme protagonists.
Her work has also been published in Unwinnable Monthly (click here to read her cover feature on Nancy Drew games), Salt Hill Journal, Poets.org, Litro Magazine, Public Books, and more. She was the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Columbia University's Culinarian Magazine, and served for two years as the Managing Editor of Aster(ix) Literary Journal.
She recently graduated with a MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Her writing, art, graphic design, and marketing work can be viewed at www.amandatien.com.
She does not post a lot on social, but you can find her on X and on Instagram.
