New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering aims to brings the world of climbing and bouldering to a new audience using bold graphics and an excellent soundscape.
Wikkl Works is a Dutch company that was formed in 2022 and formerly worked on apps and games for mobile phones. However, as of this year, they will develop and publish New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering. This is their first PC game and is set to release in July 2023. Wikkl Works also has an active community they are in constant contact with, with a discord focused on fixing bugs and improving the game before release with both a Bug Report and Suggestions tab in the server.
New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering lets the player explore the world of free-climbing in a risk-free and accessible way. The developers pride themselves on their Photogrammetry programming that allows them to scan real work assets and create them in the game as high-quality models for the players to explore.
Being an amateur boulderer myself, I was excited to see if the game could create the feeling of climbing when I was unable to go myself. I also wanted to see if the game could create an environment that would allow for an accessible way for those who are unable to climb to experience it for themselves.
New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering starts in Rachel’s Gym to allow the player to go through a tutorial of the basic controls, slowly building over time. The feeling of your first bouldering lesson is definitely recreated in the early stages of the game. With flailing limbs and an uncertainty of whether you are doing it right being prevalent, it feels exactly like a day of beginners rock climbing. The tutorial quickly sets you on the right path, however, explaining the controls at the start of each wall.
New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering even introduces the player to experiences they may have in a real bouldering gym, needing two hands on the top hold in order to complete a wall, although with far less chalk being stuck to you afterwards. From Rachel’s Gym you move on to several different areas of the game, unlocking more as you progress, starting with a simple cliff section. Through the voiceover, you learn that the climbing team is exploring new areas to allow the player to then move on to them. From the cliffs, you move to a castle that has multiple areas within it to explore.
Beyond this, the story is fairly limited. New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering focuses instead on the completionist that exists in most gamers, rather than a complex storyline. Some climbing routes are only unlocked once the player has gained enough XP to move from Beginner to Intermediate routes and beyond. New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering also only unlocks new areas once you have collected enough stars, one of which requires 999 to unlock.
These higher difficulty paths open once you have completed a certain amount of the lower-level routes and are fairly easy to progress through quickly. This means the next goal feels within reach, encouraging you to keep going even if you have a lot of stars left to unlock before reaching the next section.
As you progress through the initial gym, the controls are built upon introducing climbing with legs and eventually adding controlling the core of the climber to move towards and away from the wall. This is the way the game advances the gameplay mechanics for the player. In this gym you also meet the gym cat, who you have the chance to pet once you reach the top of one of the walls (this was a very important part of New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering for me personally as a cat fan). Once out of the training area, each climb comes with individual challenges, although these do lack variety.
After several hours of playing I am yet to see a challenge that isn’t: 1 Star- completing the track, 2 Stars- no falls on the route, 3 Stars- completing the track in under 5 mins. This doesn’t mean there isn’t variety in other elements of the game. Differing terrain means there are meandering routes up cliffs with many turns in them. While being structured with a suggested path available, these are not the only way to climb these routes with a lot of deviation being available if you want to attempt to traverse the cliffs in a different way.
The controls in New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering are kept very simple, which is definitely to the game’s benefit. While there are controls for the climber’s feet I found them largely unnecessary unless I was attempting a particularly ambitious climb or wanting to climb past the end point of a route (there was a cat I was determined to say hello to at the top of one). This means that the feet often clamber after the player and usually only minor adjustments need to be made to their positioning.
Once I realised I could let this happen, it did make the timed challenges far easier. I was pleased with this discovery as it was often while manually moving the feet that I often found myself plummeting to the ground. However, if you are looking for true realism in your climbing game, being able to ignore the lower part of your body doesn’t quite fit the bill. But, like I said, it is up to the player whether or not they leave their feet to clamber up after them.
While playing with a keyboard and mouse, I found I was a lot more exploratory with my routes due to the precise movements I could have. I wanted to see if New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering was also playable with a controller as well. As a bouldering simulation that claims to open a world of climbing to those who may not have access to it, I wanted to explore the accessibility options ready for those who may need them.
Controllers are often suited to people with mobility issues as they are very customisable. I wanted to ensure the game was able to be accessible in this way for those who needed it. I found New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering was just as enjoyable on a controller as it had been with a keyboard and mouse. The same level of precision was not as available using the thumbstick, but beyond that, using the controller as an input system was still a very enjoyable way to play the game.
The use of photogrammetry allows the texture of the climbing routes to be incredibly detailed. Usually saved for the big boys of gaming, being seen recently in games such as Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Battlefield 1 to make truly stunning and realistic environments, I was surprised to see a smaller studio using it. However, the technique being used as part of the game’s mechanics is a truly innovative use of the technology. The scale of the walls and cliffs when compared to the player model feels very realistic.
The photogrammetry programming used by Wikkl Works is also far closer range than the usual arial version used. This makes the models still clearer and also adds to the realistic colouring and textures in a rock face. It should be noted that this game, while requiring low specs to install, needs to be able to run on fairly high graphics, otherwise much of the climbing routes are lost in the lower-quality resolution. That being said, with the models being 3D rather than simply painted on, it is possible to swing the camera around and see the next intended handhold as it jutted out from the wall, even on lower settings.
When at higher qualities, these textures look fantastic in-game, and the details within them are very realistic, making the photogrammetry software feel more than worth it. And this realism is by design. The initial demo for New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering had a far more stylised set of textures that filled a more cartoony vibe. However, throughout development, the team describes finding that their stylised version was never as beautiful as the real textures of nature. This care and attention to detail is clearly a project of passion that helps the game feel like a true bouldering simulator.
There is limited voice acting in New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering, the majority of which are explanatory moments that are told through narration. This narration is also utilised throughout the tutorial section of the game and when welcoming the player to new areas of the game. The voice acting is calming and, although nothing out of this world, it is a nice addition to the game that helps with the accessibility of the game, along with the subtitles that go with it. The game has a lot more to offer in the sound design, the background noise rounds off the realism of the game with the sounds of nature that are used.
Ambient sound plays throughout the game to allow the player to feel like they are in the environment they are playing in. I took note of the ambience at once because of the incredible realistic quality of the sound. I decided to reach out to the developer to find out how they got hold of the sounds they used. Wikkl Works were kind enough to tell me about the online library they used that gave them access to an extraordinary amount of hand-recorded sounds.
They then layered, designed and implemented these sounds into the game. This makes New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering incredibly immersive, particularly the wind sounds that get louder as you climb higher, which can also add to the intensity of the moment. It does effectively create a similar sensation to the adrenalin rush often felt at the top of a particularly hard bouldering route.
Outside of the voice work and ambient sound, there are very few sound effects. While reaching out to the developers on Discord, I mentioned this lack of sound queues. One of the main mechanics of New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering is the stamina metre that pops up on the bottom of the screen. I found that I didn’t always notice this until it was too late, and I was on the verge of falling and having to restart the route. I brought this up to the devs and was met with a positive response from those making the game, saying they would look into adding a sound effect when the player’s stamina metre appeared to allow for better accessibility.
New Heights: Realistic Climbing and Bouldering is a delightful game that allows the world of climbing to be experienced by those who may not have the opportunity to explore it otherwise. The completionist in me is ready to hop back into the game to complete more challenges and complete more stars. With an effective soundscape and the innovative use of photogrammetry, the game certainly has a great deal to offer.
Their socially active team is still working on updating the game, taking the community’s suggestions into account. Whether you are a climber yourself or just interested in the activity, this is a game well worth keeping an eye on. The game is still on Early Access, so it’ll be nice to see if Wikkl Works brings more to the game for the final release.
