Peak Shows You Don't Need Horror Or Quirky Party Games To Be One Of...

In addition to our main Game of the Year Awards 2025, each member of the PC Gamer team is shining a spotlight on a game they loved this year. We'll post new personal picks each day throughout the rest of the month. You can find them all here.

When I was 11 years old, I got lost in the woods. I was on a school trip, part of which involved splitting us into groups, handing us a map and a compass and, for whatever reason, sending us off unsupervised for an orienteering adventure. We were the only group who did not make it back. After what felt like an eternity we were scooped up by an adult and returned to lodgings. I still consider it one of the biggest failures of my life.

Luckily for me I've not had much need for navigation tools since—Google Maps exists for a reason, and even that tests my patience when my phone can't quite figure out which direction I'm facing. But even 20 years later I've held onto that desire to redeem myself. Give me the city, the forest, the mountain. I'll orienteer the hell out of that bad boy.

I mean, virtually works too, right? When climbing game Peak landed earlier this year, it was my chance for redemption. Not just to prove that I am a champion over the earth, but to finally become a decorated Scout after I got my Party Planner badge and dipped during my brief stint as a Girl Guide in the late 2000s. Not only did I get to realise both of those dreams, but Peak completely altered my perception of what a good co-op game should be.

Like anyone with a Discord server and five dollars in their Steam wallet, co-op games have become an integral bonding ritual among my friend group. REPO, Lethal Company, Phasmophobia. You know, your classics. My issue with those, however, is how easy it is for everyone to split off and do their own thing. Phasmo passenger princesses refusing to enter the house, or that one person who sets the truck to leave in REPO while you're still halfway across the map.

Peak demands teamwork. So much so that if your impatient pal ventures too far off without you, a skeletal monster spawns and flings them off the mountain as punishment. It means that I constantly have to stick close to my fellow climbers, for better or worse. No colourful, globular-headed man left behind.

But I kind of love that. Hidden in the chaos of Peak's mountain-climbing endeavours is a series of team-driven decisions: Even from the very beginning, awakening near the crash site with a smattering of items among the debris. Who is the most

Source: PC Gamer