Rock-climbing game Jusant could be the chill-out experience of the year

polygon.com:

In a vast desert, scattered with the eroded husks of long-dead boats, there stands a vast tower. The word “tower” doesn’t really cover it. Rectangular mountain? City-sized monolith? Vertical landscape? Whatever, our young hero, dressed in technical sports gear and a feathery, birdlike cape, walks toward it with determination. We’re going up.

This is Jusant, a gorgeous, meditative, quietly gripping climbing game from French developer Don’t Nod (Life Is Strange). It’s coming out on PlayStation 5, Steam, and Xbox Series X later this fall, with a day-one Game Pass release. I’ve played a demo encompassing the first few hours of Jusant, and it’s already one of my favorite experiences in a brilliant year for video games.

In French, the word “jusant” refers to an ebbing tide. In the game’s world, a civilization of people once lived on that tower of rock amid a huge, swelling sea, descending with the tide to fish and forage, then scampering back up. When the sea eventually dried up, the people descended the tower for good, and dispersed. Now, much later, our hero is retracing their path upward, picking through the remains of their lives, accompanied by a chirping little blob of a water creature that lives in the hero’s backpack and has resonant powers.

The art uses a mixture of mountaineering and nautical motifs to conjure this mysterious people from their empty world. Everything is cracked and weathered, carved smooth by sea and air, richly hued and beautiful. You find notes as you climb, filling you in on the trivial moments of a society that might have been dying or being reborn as the sea withdrew — it’s hard to tell.

That’s the context, and it’s very atmospheric, especially as you turn onto a bleached cliff that faces the