Three game devs climb a mountain - part 6

"This is a thing that roguelikes and climbing games have together," says Bennett Foddy, completely unfazed by how close to death we are. "Which is that you carry the things that go badly for you. You carry them forward into your run, right?

"There's that thing that roguelike designers talk about. About how a roguelike can be 'flexible' or 'inflexible'. If it's flexible, it means that you can always turn it around to your favor and do your preferred strategy. And if it's inflexible, you have to roll with whatever happens in the randomness. And this one feels like we have to go with whatever happens, right? But I think that's maybe typical of climbing games."

What has happened is that we are all exhausted, poisoned, starving, and injured. I don't know how "flexible" or "inflexible" the others feel, but I do not feel particularly well-treated by the game's dice rolls. Holly stops us on the next ridge.

"I have an item," she says. "I don't quite know what it does. It's called Pandora's lunchbox."

There is a ripple of sound I would categorise as nervous laughter.

"I used it once and it gave me food," she says. "I used it again and it gave me hunger, which is bad. So, if anyone wants to try it... if one of you is pretty hungry, you might as well take the chance, I guess."

Bennett eats the contents of the lunchbox without a second thought. It makes him a little sleepy, but does sate some hunger. As anyone who has played Peak may know, this could have gone worse.

We come to a huge chasm. With our harried stamina bars, it would be unwise to clamber down and up again. Holly decides it is time to use the cannon she's been saving. This will launch us across the gap, she promises, planting it down on the edge of a cliff. It concerns me that the cannon's trajectory will also fire its human payload into a large cloud of toxic purple gas, which blankets the rocks on the other side of the chasm. But I stay silent. I am only here, I tell myself, to observe.

Holly volunteers first. Bennett Foddy lights the fuse. Boom. She soars over the gap, into the cloud of toxins, and out of sight.

"Great shot to victory!" we hear her say. And then: "Uh, when you get to the other side - run."

I quickly light the fuse and start launching the others. Bennett flies. Emeric rockets. I hurtle. Everyone is disoriented in the purple mist, we all get separated, and struggle to find one another. I hear Holly's voice.

"I see a body," she says. "I'm coming, I'm coming!"

But the person she has found is not one of us.

"Wh... what are these things? Oh, they're attacking me! Oh, you have a– oh, god. You have mushrooms in you."

I scramble to a tree branch, just outside the mist. I can't see what's happening in there. But the groans and snarls of Peak's new zombie enemies begin to penetrate the fog. I knew this would happen. You can't take game developers anywhere without zombies showing up. Bennett manages to locate me, and joins me hiding in the treetop. Together, we hear voices as Emeric reacts to an unseen assailant.

"I'm being bullied by everything!" screams the Cairn developer.

Next to us, we hear a swift popping sound, like a cartoon bubble bursting.

"Well, hello," says the ghost of Holly, who has manifested beside us as a floating wisp of jagged-mouth mortality.

A zombie has killed her, in some dank corner we couldn't see. Now, she's just a phantom that can circle us and watch. This is Peak's way of letting you spectate your friends as they attempt to make it the rest of the way without you. If we make it to the summit, there's a statue that'll let us resurrect Holly. I jump from the tree back to the rocky ledges only to find Emeric's prostrate, knocked-out body lying in the moss. He's still alive. I do not fancy our chances. But I heave him onto my back anyway, and tell Bennett to lead the way.

"Fair enough," he says, "I guess we'll go up this tree."

Will we survive? Find out in the next (and final) part