Insurmountable, a turn-based mountaineering roguelike, is an overlooked gem

There are plenty of games in which you can climb that mountain over there. Some of them, like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or Death Stranding, even take the act of climbing pretty seriously. In these games, the weather, the air temperature, and your stamina are all factors you’re going to have to consider as you succumb to the deep human urge to get to the top of a thing.

There are a handful of games that are actually about climbing, like the knockabout social game Peak, or the VR experience The Climb, or the meditative Jusant, or the more technical Cairn, which is out soon. In some of these, you’re actively thinking about which limb to move next, which handhold or foothold to aim for, when to deploy a piton. In these games, the climb is an end in itself.

And then there’s Insurmountable, a unique mountaineering game by Berlin indie studio ByteRockers’ Games that came out in 2021. Insurmountable isn’t technical, it’s tactical. It breaks the act of exploring mountain wildernesses down into turn-based strategy, emphasizing route planning and resource management. But it’s also about mountaineering as a kind of choose-your-own spiritual adventure, during which strange events and chance discoveries fall into your path.

Everything you need to know about Insurmountable can be summed up in the fact that it has a sanity meter. This is one of five personal reserves you need to keep an eye on as you plot your climber’s route up (and down) mountains made out of raised hex tiles that look a bit like the basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway. (The others are health, energy, body temperature, and oxygen.)

The sanity meter doesn’t imply that Insurmountable is some kind of Eternal Darkness-style horror game (although it does have some surprising fantasy and sci-fi elements, and a time-loop device in the plot). But it does underline the game’s focus on mental as well as physical endurance. The longer you spend on the mountain on your own, in inhospitable conditions, the more your sanity slowly drains away. But sanity can also be restored by the mountain; by a chance encounter with a local person or another mountaineer, or by a beautiful vista.

More so than most mountaineering games, Insurmountable is about the long, lonely haul of wilderness exploration. A single turn usually takes several hours in game time, and an ascent is counted in days or even weeks; planning when and where to sleep to recover energy is key. In a way, thanks to the game’s turn-based nature, time is another abstract resource you need to manage, like temperature or oxygen. You have a lot of it, but not an infinite amount in every mission, and doing anything comes with a cost. This is especially true in the events that are triggered at points of interest, where you need to balance the time it takes to, for example, search an abandoned camp, against the potential rewards from your search: tins of energy-restoring food, oxygen tanks, maybe a nice hat to keep your head warm.

Insurmountable is a roguelite game, with permadeath, randomized events, and procedurally generated mountains that are never the same twice. There are multiple climber archetypes to collect and develop across runs. There’s dynamic weather, and visibility is also a major concern, as storms and nighttime reduce your ability to see and plan your route ahead.

But despite all that, the experience of playing it is not stressful. Like many single-player, turn-based titles, it’s an ideal pipe-and-slippers game; a relaxing and ruminative experience that can be played with one hand on the mouse and the other cupping a mug of hot tea. It’s a perfect game for long winter evenings, sitting in the warm and dry as, turn by turn and click by click, you send your brave little mannequin deeper into another biting, lonely wilderness.

Insurmountable is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC via Steam, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.