Forget Elden Ring Nightreign or Expedition 33, the toughest boss fight I've faced this year is a slippery rock face on an empty stomach

Plenty of iconic boss fights have made their way to us through 2025 so far, but I'm here to tell you that none of them are as threatening as the concept of scrabbling up a cliff in the rain with your rumbling stomach echoing off the rocks around you. Peak has become an accidental phenomenon since its surprise release back in June, and it's easily one of my favorite games of the year.

The premise is simple. Having crash landed on a tropical island, you need to climb to its peak, light a signal flare, and catch the helicopter back to civilization. Unfortunately, you're a dumpy little blob of a character with dangerously wobbly ankles and a raging appetite. While your free-climbing abilities might be better than your physique would imply, it only takes one missed hold or a single hubristic climb to send you crashing into the chasm below.

Balancing act

That's all made more difficult by the fact that several environmental factors can conspire to limit your climbing capabilities. Peak throws an interesting twist on survival game hunger meters into its mix, every moment you go without food limiting the amount of stamina you can use for a successful climb. Go too long without a bite to eat, and you'll not only hear your stomach growling, but you won't be able to get as far up a cliff face or as far along a hanging rope or vine. Your friends might be able to help you up the worst of the climbs, but doing so will take the whole squad extra time, meaning that everyone else gets hungrier in the process.

And it might only get worse from there. A bad fall means you'll get injured, the resulting stamina loss only being fixed by a med kit. Getting caught in a blizzard means you risk frostbite unless you can warm up. Eating underripe fruit to sate your hunger might leave you poisoned. Even an energy drink can make you sleepy once its initial effects wear off. Peak very quickly becomes a game of balancing your resources against your limitations, maxing out on stamina where you can and praying that the consequences of your actions don't lead to you running out of gas as you're trying to rope-swing across a ravine.

That's often where your friends come in. While you can play Peak solo - and I've had a few pleasingly meditative climbs myself - it's best in a group. Playing with friends means that you can carry more collective gear without being totally weighed down, which means more imaginative solutions to some of the bigger climbing problems.

Your companions can reach down to pull a struggling climber up to safety, or even help boost them towards an out-of-reach ledge. Throw in the proximity chat that has been a crucial part of Peak's viral popularity, and you've got a system that all-but forces you to work together, dialing up the tragedy when a friend can't quite make the last gasp towards your outstretched hand and falls tumbling into the mist below, their screams echoing vainly as they fall out of earshot.

Peak can be deeply silly, and joint developers Landfall and Aggro Crab are certainly not afraid to lean into that, with giant lollipops, blow darts, and literal banana peel pratfalls all heightening the comedy, especially in the lower regions of the island. But once you've made it through the slippery Tropics biome and into the more dangerous Alpine and Caldera regions beyond, Peak starts to get serious.

Even getting halfway to safety can be a significant time investment, and while it's all fun and games at the lower altitudes, it becomes clear that a single act of hubris can throw an hour of work away once you get higher up. I once had to complete a desperate climb through the snow all on my own, the ghosts of my friends swirling chaotically around me until I could resurrect them by completing the Alpine climb, and I felt the weight of all three of those co-climbers on my shoulders as I made the slow ascent.

New heights

I'm yet to actually complete Peak, despite multiple attempts. The final biome is a cruel mistress, with an agonizing climb; go too fast and you risk a fall which spells almost certain death; go too slow and you'll be crippled by hunger, the likelihood of finding food among its barren, flame-blasted ledges almost nil. My heart was in my mouth with every jump I made, and I was drained from the mental effort of figuring out the next step forward with every successful climb. Even with friends reaching out to help on every new ascent, the stress began to build up and up, until, three-quarters of the way to the final Peak, I slipped, and was forced to watch, devastated, as my friends made it to the top and boarded the chopper without me.

Peak's success isn't a surprise in and of itself, even if you get the impression that its joint development teams still don't quite believe their luck. Since Getting Over It, plenty of games have attempted to put a co-op twist on the idea that a single mistake can spell doom for your entire run. But while those often felt like they relished in the punishment they meted out, Peak succeeds because it makes you feel like it wants you to succeed as well.

From its slapstick humor to its surprisingly caring approach to looking out for your fellow climbers, it sets up a narrative that's about more than just making the next jump - it's about the people you make the jump with, and the story of each individual ascent. It's about no dumpy little boy scout being left behind, and that's why I'm more scared of my friend messing up a simple jump than anything the Paintress, the Nightlord, or any other boss I've faced so far this year can throw at me.

See what else we've been enjoying this year in our Indie Spotlight series.