Climber Animals: Together Review (PC)

Behind its doughy farmyard aesthetic and boggle-eyed critters, Climber Animals: Together harbors a wolf in sheep’s clothing—a rage game, of sorts, that you love to mindlessly graze in, but also hate to play for longer than absolutely necessary. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cute multiplayer game that loves to spoon feed you small portions of clay-like substances. But it’s also a game that, like most obstacle course titles, doesn’t shy away from slapping you on the knuckles whenever you begin to feel at ease with its ludicrous physics. The question is, does an adorable exterior serve as a good counterweight for what is, with all due respect, a basic platforming excursion? Let’s talk.

The idea here is simple: eight farmyard animals enter a colossal environment comprised of floating objects and other structures and, in an effort to ascend to the top, desperately work together (or against one another) to tackle a rigorous set of challenges. It isn’t the least bit perplexing, nor is it a game that you have to think about for hours on end in order to truly understand. It’s an obstacle course, complete with the rage-fueled antics and the comically shoddy physics that you would typically expect to find in any bog-standard party game. Climber Animals: Together just happens to be a little, well, pudgy.

Arguably one of the worst things you can do when entering a game like Climber Animals is misinterpret it as a relaxing couch co-op experience. It isn’t quite that. Rather, it’s a game that loves to fool around with you and test your patience, your timing, and above all, your willingness to find greener pastures in a world that, well, wants you to suffer.

Of course, it isn’t all doom and gloom here; Climber Animals does, believe it or not, have some wholesome touches to share. Alongside a cast of squidgy farm animals—pigs, chickens, and cows, for example—the game also offers an annoyingly captivating landscape that’s absolutely bursting at the seams with vibrant set pieces and colorful inflatables. If you can take all of these things at face value, then you shouldn’t find it difficult to interpret Climber Animals as a fun-loving experience. But, that’s the clincher here: it isn’t. It’s wholesome, but it’s also perfectly capable of yanking on your strings and giving you something to fret about. But hey — at least it’s fun, right? Right?

Like most obstacle runners, Climber Animals makes an effort to keep you coming back for another bout of pain, not with a wide selection of courses, but with a fickle promise that, should you be willing to endure the same fate time and time again, vast possibilities will gradually arise from countless failures. If you fall, you start from the beginning, naturally. However, in an attempt to shake things up a little, each course offers you different avenues to explore, meaning, you always have another choice to make. Granted, most of the corridors often lead to a lot of pain and suffering. Locating the right path, on the other hand, can leave you feeling oddly satisfied. Or, at the bare minimum, better than the other animals in the room.

I can’t bring myself to say that Climber Animals is a brilliant game, because, like all obstacle courses that harbor a gimmick, it is still a niche experience that is just as likely to fall on deaf ears as it is to borrow them for a handful of hours or more. Given that it solely relies on the same procedure—to jump, fall, and to repeat the same errors time and time again—the odds of you finding a diverse experience are pretty slim here. Or at least, in the single-player mode, anyway.

As the title openly implies, Climber Animals is a game that’s best served as a multiplayer affair. With up to eight players in the room, the game naturally finds its stride and becomes an engaging experience that’s both entertaining and awfully competitive. And that’s arguably the greatest thing about it: the collaborative work that you and your friends fight tooth and nail to accomplish. Oh, it’s stressful, and I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t pure rage bait on a doughy platter. But, contrary to popular belief, there is a fun platforming game here.

If you’re curious to know whether or not Climber Animals is a difficult game to learn — it isn’t. Given that most of the experience is largely based around basic platforming trappings—jumping, walking, and zig-zagging across narrow terrain, for example—you don’t need to be an expert in the field to don the dough and make headway on your journey. A bit of patience, for sure, but not a lot of skill, weirdly.

When Climber Animals finds its rhythm and starts to fall into place, it can often feel great to aimlessly romp through. It isn’t without its flaws and shortcomings I’ll admit. But, to give credit where it’s due, it delivers on its promise to conceive a simple, hair-pulling party platforming game that can be enjoyed with friends for a couple of hours, give or take. With a solid variety of courses to tackle and enough obstacles to overcome, it finds its place as a quick, reliable, and budget-friendly excursion, nothing more, nothing less. The question is, is it worth pouring your heart and soul into, or is the blood, sweat and tears far too noticeable to make the reward worthwhile?

Verdict

Climber Animals: Together finds comfort in the dough as an adorable yet irritating addition to the multiplayer platforming genre. It might not offer a lot more than a textbook rage-baiting obstacle course, but I can just about find it within myself to give it the credit it probably deserves. It isn’t perfect, but it is a lot of fun to endure alongside a few friends. Or at least, it is, until the world comes tumbling down and the chickens fail to fly the coop for the twentieth time. After that it just becomes an incredibly frustrating pivoting exercise.