You should use Peak as an excuse to hang out with your friends

Pictured: A vicious cycle of me poisoning my friend for over-trumpeting, and her trumpeting in retaliation

Peak?

If you haven’t already seen it on your feeds, I’d be shocked. Peak (by studios Aggro Crab and Landfall) is yet another game that seems perfectly designed to spread itself through short form videos on whatever social media you have the displeasure of being addicted to. I’m not judging. The horrors of the attention economy aside, I’m glad I stumbled across Peak when I did.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been doing something akin to a stocktake and spring clean of my life. I mention this because I recently realised the effect of the increasing intensity of my job, the lack of time to spend on my relationship, not to mention the Sisyphean task that is trying to keep house clean. It’s all left me with a subtle loneliness and lingering exhaustion that I’ve unknowingly allowed to fester. That isn’t to say my life is particularly difficult or noteworthy, I guarantee that you’ve felt the same way at some point in your life. Regardless, I’m a problem solver and chose to see this as another problem I can enjoy working on, however loneliness is an awkward issue to solve on your own. It’s notoriously harder to make new friends outside of the routines of the education system, or once you’ve stopped job-hopping and settled down into a single workplace. Don’t get me started on trying to schedule a games night or dinner with a group who all work in completely different industries.

That’s where Peak comes in, making a grand and unexpected entrance. In simplest terms, Peak is an online cooperative platformer that takes place on a randomly generated map consisting of climbing challenges through increasingly difficult biomes. But that doesn’t tell you much about the actual experience. This game can also be played single-player and offline, though I imagine it would be an experience similar to playing snakes and ladders solo. No, Peak is about you and your friends bonding over conquering a tough but reasonable challenge, while making you laugh so hard that you struggle to communicate your next course of action. Personally I tend to play multiplayer games like a bit of a menace, unhelpful in ways that are sometimes only entertaining to myself. Peak is so well designed and evocative that instead of acting like my usual mischievous self, I became the protagonist in some dramatic war biopic. Here’s a story from that climb:

“Our band had just crossed the amazonian threshold, a good start to our campaign across the mountain. We made the mistake of relaxing. Getting complacent. One of our troops failed to notice how encumbered he was carrying more than his fair share of the supplies. The four of us made a risky leap, celebrating our mastery of the terrain. Until we realised that now we numbered three. A scream bellowed from further and further down the cliff, the echoes filling us with despair. My squad mates agreed he couldn’t have survived the fall, that we had to move on. It seemed only I could hear the faint plea for help from the bottom. Abandoning the safety of my group, I dove. Falling like the Icarus that I was, until I found him. Alive, but struggling. Too injured to make progress by himself, but both of us lacking supplies or a field medic. We trudged upwards through hostile terrain, taking on whatever the world thought it could throw at us. Praying that we would find a berry-laden bush or some form of sustenance that would do more good than harm. I couldn’t leave my friend behind again, but hunger comes for us all. Man without food is no better than a beast. As weakness and cold overtook our bodies, we were ready to surrender, to tell nature it had won and may take its prize. But, at the eleventh hour, a beacon of hope lit in our ears, and then in our eyes. We had made it back, the crew of BingBong Airlines flight A037 had been reunited. Now at least whatever perils were to come, we would face them together.”

Other times I’d try and leave banana peels near my friend’s feet while they were beside a cliff so they’d slip and fall off. To sum up, Peak is an endlessly entertaining casual platformer that provides a variety of experiences. There will always be a motivating force acting as the impetus for your climb, and there will always be a temptation to mess around in spite of it.

An Excuse?

I mentioned earlier that it can be frustratingly difficult to wrangle everyone’s schedules and actually name a time and place to catch-up. To use myself as an example, I’m a chef who works split shifts and weekends. My friends include but are not limited to: a banker, a teacher, a university student, an expat researcher, a waitress, a bartender, a government worker, and a van-lifer. This may shock you, but there is not an overwhelming amount of overlap in our schedules. In walks Peak yet again, this time wearing a beautiful thrifted outfit, to brag about its phenomenal price point of around $12. A price so low that I ended up impulse buying a few copies, not just for myself but as gifts for a few of my online mates. Because I can’t do anything just to be nice, I also attached the following message:

“By reading this you have agreed to a legally binding commitment to engage in a video game activity with myself and to make humorous asides no less than 3 times.”

Silly, I know. But it worked so much better than expected. Over the week that followed I played about four nights, with a different group each time. Some were friends I caught up with every few weeks, and others who I had never actually played games online with. When I call this game a good excuse to catch up with your friends, I actually mean that its an easy and effective one that I implore you to use. At such a low price point, its not hard to convince your mates to buy in with you, and in the worst case, buy one a present and let them know you want to hang out! Beyond that, the average run in Peak takes around an hour, and the control scheme is surprisingly intuitive. This isn’t a title where you’re not sure if you’ll have enough time to play tonight, or if you can be bothered learning a whole new control scheme. Instead, it leaves people ending a run and sheepishly suggesting another because c’mon we were so close. It can also be tricky to remember what all the similar looking or strangely named items do, but there’s also no real harm in gaslighting someone into eating half a bush worth of poison berries before they realise, just for a laugh. So what you’re left with, is a reasonably priced highly-replayable challenge that respects your time, and where the true fun emerges in the stories your group experiences. There’s no overarching campaign to lock you down to a single group or get you stuck patiently waiting for everyone to be available again either. You can just boot up, send the message out to whoever happens to be online, and spend an hour alternating between beautiful teamwork and malevolent pranks. Scheduling is for losers, I’ll be on in 5.

Hang Out?

Not everybody is able to dedicate a few hours of their week and a fistful of dollars to going out, getting an evening meal or participating in some social activity. I for one enjoy bowling, but admittedly it is shockingly overpriced. We’re all losing precious time to work, and to the mental or physical recovery that follows. Even once you manage to escape to your home, there’s doubtless chores waiting, meals to be made, messages or emails to reply to. It doesn’t take long before exhaustion sets in and it feels like you are just endlessly bouncing between your bed and your job. What you need is a third place. Coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg, it refers to a familiar public space where you can freely socialise, which is not your home or your workplace. Hence, third place. Libraries and parks are common examples, but admittedly not an exciting invitation to send out. I have a newfound love of reading, but I’m not going to launch out of my papasan chair when a friend asks if I’d like to silently peruse the local bibliotheca. That’s where, once more, Peak strides in, or rather, you stride in to Peak.

I’ve tried playing numerous games with my groups, an attempt to keep in contact with people I just don’t have the time to drive and see in person anymore. Inevitably, conversation gets quieter, the sessions get fewer, and it peters out for a few months till some new title rekindles the fire. But that hasn’t been the case with Peak. With features like proximity chat, physical bodies that you can’t simply phase through, a wheel of cute (if not extremely smug) poses to use as a situation’s punchline, Peak works hard to let you feel like you’re sharing a world with other real people. Not to mention, an invitation to play has much lower stakes compared to other games or even real-world activities, it feels like the internet-age equivalent of catching up with your long distance friend over a phone call.

Peak was my first experience with proximity chat. For those of you who aren’t familiar, it’s a feature where your voice comes out in the world in a physically immersive way that is affected by the surrounding environment. Standing miles away? The wind will carry the faintest whisper of your voice. Screaming in a seemingly endless cavern? You’ll hear a banshee’s echo resonating off the cave walls. It seems at first glance to be a small aesthetic feature, not something that would have a great effect on the feel of playing. In actuality it’s the feature most responsible for making it feel like you are sharing a physical space with other people, not just making small talk over a discord call. You can drag someone away and quietly plan a prank leaving the rest of your group none the wiser to your machinations. Or once you’ve gotten utterly lost, possibly due to getting a bit too close and intimate with an exploding cliff-side fungus, you can attempt echolocation. However, due to your character being a stranded scout and not a creature of the night, this looks a lot more like a confused hungry camper shouting at clouds. But honestly what sells the experience, is when the path ahead is clear and obvious, and for the time being there’s no need to carefully plan your ascent. Rather, you all start idly climbing the obvious path while exchanging recent stories from your personal lives, and realise that you’re not playing a game, you’re just going on a hike with your friends. You’re just hanging out.

Friends?

If your mind works anything like mine, you probably feel sometimes that you don’t actually have many friends. In truth, you’ve got a lot more than you realise. The trouble is probably that you’ve felt you lacked the time, space, and energy to help maintain and grow those relationships. Some friends you worry you’ve waited too long to message back, others you feel like you haven’t connected on a personal level with in a while, or maybe everyone just seems too busy these days. Whatever the situation, I’d just like to suggest that you stay positive, and give them the benefit of the doubt. Remember that your exhausting schedule and mental weirdness isn’t unique to you, in fact considering they’re your friends they’re probably even weirder than you. You weirdo. Instead, I suggest a bit of healthy proactive effort. I have some suggestions that have worked for me.

For the friend you haven’t heard from in too long, send an unprompted message, sometimes it helps to be the person who messages first.
Got a friend who you keep just exchanging “What’s new?” messages with? Tell them something recent-ish that you’re proud of, a big project you’re working on, a small problem you can’t believe has taken you so long. Give them something to ask about. But don’t forget to ask a sincere question about their life in return!
What about that friend who you only ever see as part of a group? Ask them out for a short coffee, a lunch, a hike, a 1v1 in an online game you share. Something easy and conversational, to trial your new solo friend.
Don’t feel like you have a way to meet new people? Go out with your friends and their friends, whether its a party or some other kind of event, even just going out for a drink with fun people. If you like your friend, chances are you’ll like some of theirs too.
Looking to find some new friends but there are no parties this time of year? Arrange a board game night and gather whichever folks are free, and ask if anyone wants to bring a friend. (I recommend Wavelength or Anomia)
Finally, and counterintuitively, don’t forget to enjoy the time you spend alone and pursue your own interests passionately. It gives you something interesting to bring to conversation, a chance to be part of a community, and peace of mind on the days where no one is available.

Hopefully these suggestions inspire you to reach out to someone. We could all use a little more social activity in our lives. On those days where you don’t have the time to go out in person, or to do something at a reasonable hour, Peak will be there waiting. An excellent little adventure up that mountain, a small handful of newly-rekindled friends in tow. That’s why I think you should use Peak as an excuse to hang out with your friends.