Quick Summary
Peak sends you and your friends on a scouts’ trip but – what is that? Your plane crashes unexpectedly and now you have to get to the top of the mountain so you can get rescued! Grab your gear, food, and the trusty Airline mascot, BingBong. With multiple levels, this game is great for recurring friend game nights or just as one-off fun.
My Opinion
My friend Sol pitched this game to all of us one day for game night. We didn’t really know what to expect or how many times we would play this game, but for £6.39 (price on Steam at time of review), I honestly didn’t mind either way. Unfortunately, this tiny price tag became the precursor for what was to come.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the game itself is not bad. The premise is simple, get gear, climb mountain, escape via helicopter. But this is unfortunately also all there is to it – that is the only objective. Yes, you can hunt for achievements but for my husband for example, Peak is very much a “one-and-done” sort of game.
Games that you play over and over again, that start you at the beginning of the gameplay loop every time you fail is lovingly referred to as “friendslop” – normally this is specifically for games that also have horror elements but I think Peak fits this very perfectly. A game that you play with friends because it has gained popularity on social media, that will eventually have a steep drop-off in popularity.
With it’s simple mechanics and gameplay objective, Peak is really what you make of it.
Replayability
You can replay this game quite often but the objective never changes. The maps change every 24 hours so there is a bit of variation in terms of strategy to get to the top but the end game and map types never really change, just the layout of the maps.
Reviews
There are many positive reviews of Peak such as this Steam review from user Relax:
“Peak is a great game honestly, Climb a mountain together with your friends and get multiple items during this adventure, its really funny if for example someone falls down and in proximity voicechat you hear how is voice gets more silent and silent while falling :D”
Other users are more on the fence about the game, especially when it comes to bugs, as user Fishmond Fry writes:
“The gameplay is really fun, especially for the price. However, there’s a lot of bugs. The most intolerable one is super frequent random disconnections of players. They can rejoin, but they’ll have no items and will be far from the team, which kills the fun.”
One of the publishers of Peak, Landfall, have also gotten in some hot water lately as some users do not agree with a clause in their EULA they have added. As redditor EmotionalLesbo writes:
“Under section 21 subsection B it states that any content created by a user regarding the game, IE: Mods, art, music, and videos will be sublicensed to the company. This includes youtube videos.”
Their reddit post on the topic and subsequent discussion in the comments are definitely worth a read.
Summary & Score
Overall, I think Peak is an okay game to play with your friends as a one-off but it does pave a very bad way for the future of gaming if “friendslop” becomes the norm. I’d personally give the game a 4/10 as it’s not a game I enjoyed or would replay too often.