PEAK: An Analysis of the Best Co-op Experience of 2025!

The explosion of multiplayer games, especially cooperative ones, has brought innovative titles and started to become one of the biggest trends among friends looking for having fun together and honest laughs. Since the immense success of Among Us (2018, Innersloth), the market for multiplayer games focused on comedy and strategy has opened up a wide range of options for all types of audiences, and it was in the midst of this roller coaster of hits and flops within the genre that a game emerged that is literally PEAK.

Released in June 2025 by the collab of independent studios Landfall and Aggro Crab, PEAK is a cooperative multiplayer game that puts you and three other friends in the aftermath of a plane crash that leaves you stranded on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere. You must explore the island and climb to its highest point, from where you can call for rescue and escape this godforsaken place.

With such a simple premise, anyone who tried the game was surprised from the very first second, bursting into laughter and recommending it to their best friends. Here, we'll analyze every part of this masterpiece and understand why PEAK is Peak!

Before the actual gameplay begins, the game sends you to an airport lobby where you can join your friends and decide on the difficulty of the adventure ahead. In this lobby, players can customize their character, interact with climbing walls, a basketball hoop and balls, ropes, conveyor belts, and even a giant chessboard. This design choice results in a game that doesn't need tutorials, because even before the game starts you have all the time you need to learn all the possible game movements and how they behave on different surfaces and angles, and it even helps you get used to the first-person camera more quickly.

Everything is vibrant, all the characters are colorful and count with hundreds of customization options for clothes, appearance, and accessories. The decorations always give a sense of exaggerated grandeur, making the player feel even smaller when they reach the mountain. The cartoonish and intentionally "weird" style fits perfectly with the game's comedic premise, and you quickly realize that the work was made to drive you crazy – in many different ways!

Arriving at the beach – where your adventure begins – the exaggerated size of everything continues to draw attention: coconut trees, rocks, and hills lead you to the mountain, and from there, the real challenge begins.

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is that you won't be climbing just one mountain, but several. The island is larger than it initially appears to be and features varied climates and biomes that completely alter the gameplay style and how you interact with obstacles.

Shore

The first biome will always be the Shore, and you'll get used to reaching its summit very quickly. You wake up on the beach sand with your friends after the plane crash and must start searching for supplies right there to survive, for God knows how long, on this mysterious island.

The low difficulty level of this biome is precisely for the player to learn all the game mechanics without the need for long tutorials and explanations. You quickly realize that slimy, purple puddles on the ground will cause you to fall and be poisoned for a short time, that there are traps like thorns and dead ends in the middle of the mountain, and that you’ll need to manage your stamina bar, which over time will be depleted by fatigue, hunger, heat, cold, poison, and all other types of hazards you can imagine. And of course: very serious injuries caused by hilarious falls from absurd heights.

In this biome, you also learn that the most important part of climbing is knowing how to store the items you find inside luggages scattered around the island, so you can use them at the best possible moment. After all, you've just embarked on a huge (and very high) test of survival, persistence, and often, patience.

The game has an internal map generation system that, every 24 hours, generates each biome from scratch, ensuring you get the most out of the replayability even if you end up getting hooked and playing every single day.

Tropics/Roots

After climbing the first mountain near the island's coast, you'll have time to light a campfire with your friends, replenish your inventory of items, and even revive an ally who may have... “perished” during the climb.

After a well-deserved rest, the game will guide you to the second biome, and this is where the maps start to get increasingly interesting and, moreover, rotating!

Each day, the game not only generates a new map but also selects between two options for stages 2, 3, and, according to the developers, soon also the fourth stage. In stage 2, the maps rotate between Tropics and Roots.

Tropics

Long considered the most difficult biome in the entire game, climbing isn't all that complex, but it will leave you insane with the sheer number of hazards and traps scattered throughout the dense tropical forest.

In Tropics, you feel like you're in the middle of some kind of Amazon before it's ever been touched by humans, almost prehistoric in its wilderness. Despite the beautiful visuals, you'll soon learn that this is no place for games: there are plants that explode, others that spew a gigantic cloud of poison, immense vines that are difficult to stay on top of, thorny vines, beehives, and even regular vines that will make you feel like Tarzan in several sections of the course.

Oh, and be prepared to wait for the rain to pass, because when it starts to pour you'll slip on the rocks and climbing will become almost impossible.

This map is also very rich in natural resources such as fruits, mushrooms, and medicinal herbs, but to find them you’ll often need to go out of your way and face the second most terrifying nature in the world (after Australia).

Roots

If you played PEAK yesterday and the second stage was Tropics, today it will be replaced by Roots.

This biome was the developers' most recent addition to the game's maps, and therefore also has an almost absurd amount of things for you to pay attention to. First of all, if you're not playing in Tenderfoot mode, be prepared to run and survive a zombie attack!

The variety of mushrooms not only increases here, but they also have varied effects that change every day just to surprise you when you need a quick and abundant food source. There are mushrooms that poison you, and even mushrooms that make you hover in the air for a few seconds (literally saving lives on many occasions). There are giant vines and mushrooms to jump on like on a trampoline, comically gigantic trees that are often essential for climbing the most complex parts of the mountain, and even giant beetles that, if you get too close, will throw you far away... and way down!

In contrast to the rain in Tropics, here you’ll have to face constant winds that can simply throw you from wherever you are and easily end a run. Unlike the rain, where you need to wait standing on some platform, here you protect yourself by holding onto vertical surfaces so you don't get swept away. Play near walls and giant trees! Except for those with spiders hanging from their tops!

The difficulty curve remains steep coming from the Beach, but being a more recent biome, it ended up taking advantage of much of the best that the developers' creativity could offer, resulting in a pressure cooker bubbling with things to pay attention to in order not to end up in a worse situation.

Alpine/Mesa

When you finally overcome all the dangers of the second phase, you'll have another campfire to rest at. Remember that with each campfire, the amount of supplies like marshmallows and hot dogs will always be reduced, forcing players to learn to better divide all the supplies among themselves. Upon completing your camp, you should be prepared for the island's greatest vertical challenges: Alpine and Mesa, the two maps where you can find capybaras resting in a small pond.

Alpine

Like Tropics, Alpine is a map included in the initial game release, which means it has significantly fewer imminent dangers compared to its counterpart, Mesa. This doesn't make this biome easy – quite the opposite, actually!

Dangers can vary from day to day, as the map sometimes generates a huge number of geysers right at the beginning. These geysers can simply explode when a player passes nearby, causing fire damage and, most likely, also a depletion of their stamina bar. Supplies are scarce here, creating a sense of urgency – especially since, every few seconds, a blizzard can engulf the entire biome and completely freeze anyone unprepared to handle the sub-zero winds.

Food is very scarce, and some parts of the mountain are made of pure ice, causing intense cold and consequently freezing players who remain in contact with its surface for too long. The hazards here are definitely more static and more easily avoidable, but they deserve attention. The vertical challenge also increases, with rocks that deceive your perspective and often make you climb for much longer than you should, wasting all your stamina and causing a loss for your group.

Mesa

You know those static and avoidable challenges in Alpine? Well, Mesa brings the complete opposite. Right off the bat, you can see that you'll have to escape tornadoes and a comically large number of cacti that can cause you a lot of damage with their thorns. Here, the strong sun burns you, forcing you to traverse the biome at night or using the rare items Sunscreen or Parasol.

This biome has three mini-stages to complete: the first challenge is horizontal, as you must cross the desert protecting yourself from the sun, tornadoes, and thorns. Hayballs can suddenly appear and throw you far away, and there's always at least one Antlion pit, a giant insect that can be the end of your campaign if you fall into its trap and get bitten.

The map will also deceive you with mirages, showing oases and suitcases that disappear when you get close. After crossing this deadly plain, you'll come face to face with the second mini-stage: the canyon. Here, a fall can mean the end, but if you pay attention to where you step and where you go, it ends up being a fairly easy path. Watch out for the scorpions, by the way! They’re slow, but their venom is very dangerous!

After reaching the other side of the canyon, you face the biome's final challenge: the mountain itself. Here, you don't need to worry about tornadoes – they’re way behind you. But you'll have to worry a lot about the dynamite scattered around the map, whose fuses ignite when the player is near, and the explosions can be frustrating.

Scorpions and cacti continue to try to hinder you, and just like in Alpine, supplies are very scarce and necessary. But you can always try grabbing a scorpion, quickly throwing it at recently lit dynamite, and running away. After the explosion, the scorpion will be cooked and ready to eat (and it’s very nutritious).

What? Not enjoying the idea of a scorpion diet? You can also eat prickleberries that will force your friends to spend a few seconds removing thorns from your character. It's up to you.

Caldera/???

Something not yet mentioned, but very important in PEAK, is the Fog. This fog slowly rises as players reach certain points in the climb, and freezes those who can't climb faster than it. From the fourth stage onwards, the Fog will no longer be a concern, giving you and your friends significantly more time to think about the best strategy for the route ahead.

After your third camp with your friends around the campfire, you'll come face to face with the Caldera – the only biome currently released for the fourth and penultimate stage of the game. The developers have already stated that they’ll soon release a new biome that should rotate with Caldera, and we still don't know what it is.

Meanwhile, prepare your breath and your patience, because here the floor is lava! This challenge, more horizontal than vertical, makes the game a completely platformer-like section, waiting for the lava to subside to jump to the next part, dodging deadly flames, steaming hot stones, and occasionally burning the hands of those who dare to hang on the chains between platforms and rocks.

The vertical urgency of the Fog disappears, but the feeling of imminent danger remains. Despite being considered an easier map by the community, it still has fewer supplies than any of the previous biomes, and the longer you take to make your decisions, the more hunger increases, injuries stack up, and burns make your life difficult.

As soon as you reach the end of the biome, the map will give you a very large amount of supply cases, equipment, and food. And you know what it means when the game gives you too much stuff like that, handed to you on a silver platter.

The Final Boss: The Kiln

After surviving the Caldera's flames, the game takes you inside a mountain – more specifically, a volcano. The Kiln is cruel, difficult, and often causes dizziness in players, as the climb here is from the inside out.

Remember the Fog? Well, it doesn't exist here either, but the floor is also lava, and this lava, just like the Fog, will start to rise after a certain amount of time. Yes, you're inside an erupting volcano and you need to reach the top faster than the magma.

It's difficult to plan your next steps on a darker map with more limited space. You're no longer climbing a mountain from the outside, and it's much harder to stop on a plateau to figure out where to go. Eventually, glowing, burning rocks will be in your path, and if there was little loot in the Caldera, imagine what it's like here!

At least the Kiln is the final test for your survival, and the closer the light at the end of the tunnel (or... at the top of the volcano) gets, the closer you are to getting rescued.

The Peak

Yes, the Kiln is the final stage of the game, and at the highest peak of the island, you can light a flare and attract a rescue helicopter, ending your adventure there.

Although the game seems short, the difficulty curve is challenging and changes daily, depending on the map sequence and the RNG of the items you manage to collect. This, at the end of the day, means that PEAK offers infinite replayability – especially if your friends are playing along.

The maps are difficult, but playing PEAK is actually very easy. Besides the game passively teaching you everything from the airport onwards, each time you try again, you end up discovering new ways to explore each map and each adventure. Even more so knowing that tomorrow the adventure will be completely different and equally challenging. The game offers a Tenderfoot Mode, in which neither Fog nor Kiln lava can rise, removing the time limit and transforming the climbing experience into an almost true Cozy Game. In this mode, stamina also takes longer to deplete and loot is more generous.

The game is also very open to public feedback, new ideas, inclusion, and accessibility. There's an "Bug-phobia Mode" that transforms all the insectoid creatures in the game, such as beetles, spiders, and ticks, into the game's mascot, a friendly, green, divorced plush toy named Bing Bong, so people who are triggered by insects can also enjoy the climb. It runs smoothly on mid-range PCs, and its graphics can be simplified for lower-performance machines. Everything seems to have been very well optimized and fluid since its launch. PEAK is available for PC (Windows) and for purchase and download on Steam.

To help seasoned players – and newcomers alike – the PEAK community has come together to create an Official Wiki, which is updated daily with the locations of the most important items, map rotations, and even the side effects of mushrooms in Roots. This has united creators, casual players, dedicated fans of the game, and even speedrunners who continue to perform feats to complete everything in under 14 minutes.

The community has also become known for creating Mods, which range from extra cosmetics to the ability to play with more than 4 people in a group. Aggro Crab and Landfall have already positioned themselves in favor of mods and often encourage and endorse the creative process and work of fans.

PEAK doesn't feature that many songs beyond what you hear on the opening screen, at the airport, and during the loading screen. When music does play, though, it's usually instrumental, adding weight to the game's atmosphere and mood. More tense music for dangerous moments, more “wintery” melodies to match the snowstorms, and so on. Immersion is guaranteed with all the sounds of nature, the wind, and the short harmonies that come and go.

The game's voice capture further enhances immersion. Often it's easy to know where your friends are; at other times, the wind and obstacles in your path prevent you from hearing anyone. Here, it's impossible not to burst into laughter when you see a friend screaming after falling from about 2400 feet high. Or even when that friend is you!

Besides the narrative being easily understood from the first playthrough, PEAK also includes a mysterious lore about the island and other scouts who ended up there in the past. The game tells you everything you need through sounds, visuals, setting narrative, and even its Steam Achievements: each one gives you one of the game's cosmetics and, in some cases, reveals parts of this fragmented story in small clues throughout various campaigns. The game has no NPCs to interact with besides enemies, such as zombies, spiders, and scorpions – all interaction in the game is between you, your friends, and the environment around you.

Well-optimized, acclaimed by the public, and nominated for Best Multiplayer Game at TGA 2025, PEAK has a host of other awards that do justice to its limitless potential. Developed with great care by creators who knew exactly the kind of chaotic fun their fans would love, the title is fun, comical, challenging, and never stops offering a different experience each day.

And you, have you played PEAK? What were your funniest or most frustrating experiences while climbing? Tell us in the comments!