Game: Sunset Summit
Developers: Joe & Andrew Fender
Publisher: Future Friends Games
Genre: Co-Op Climbing
Out: Now
Platform: PC (Steam)
Price: $4.99 · 38% launch discount
Players: 1–8 · offline solo supported
Length: ~16 hours
⛰️ Sunset Summit is out now on Steam for $4.99, with a 38% launch discount bringing it to around three dollars. It’s a co-op climbing game for one to eight players from Joe and Andrew Fender — the brothers behind DEVOUR — with 16 handcrafted routes across four floating islands and roughly 16 hours of climbing.
⚖️ Fun Over Frustration — and They Mean It Structurally
Climbing games have a reputation, and it’s largely built on punishment. Getting Over It, Jump King and their descendants are designed around loss — one bad input sends you back half an hour, and the rage is the product.
Sunset Summit is explicitly not that. There are regular checkpoints scattered along every route, and if you fall you respawn instantly.
“Just climb, fall, and try again” is the developers’ own framing, and it’s a genuine design position rather than a difficulty setting. The challenge is the route and the clock — reach the summit before sunset — not the threat of losing your progress.
That’s a meaningfully different proposition to most of the genre, and it’s the right call for a game built around eight people who need to stay in the same session.
Reach the summit before sunset
Among the listed features, in full: proximity chat, walkie talkies, and “old people.” The last one is not a joke — you’re a group of pensioners on a hike.
Sunset Summit is out now on Steam. Developed by brothers Joe and Andrew Fender and published by Future Friends Games, it’s a first-person co-op climbing game for one to eight players in which a group of old friends take a hot air balloon to a set of floating sky islands and climb ancient summits before the light goes.
You’ve got axes, ropes, pogo sticks, umbrellas, booster pills, item delivery drones and cans of beans to work with, proximity chat and walkie talkies to coordinate, and an in-game camera to document whatever happens. It’s $4.99, currently discounted 38%.
He Nearly Didn’t Finish It
💬 An Unusually Honest Developer Statement
The best thing in this announcement isn’t a feature. It’s Joe Fender explaining, plainly, that he almost abandoned the project.
He began Sunset Summit in 2021, after DEVOUR, wanting to branch out from horror. By 2023 he was burned out and — his words — unsure whether a first-person co-op climbing game would appeal to anyone at all.
Then PEAK launched, took off, and its success convinced him the idea had an audience after all. He finished the game.
Developers very rarely say this out loud. Admitting that you doubted your own project for two years, and that a competitor’s success is what got you over the line, is the sort of candour that usually gets sanded out of a press release long before it reaches us. Credit to Future Friends for leaving it in.
It’s also a neat illustration of how genres actually form. PEAK didn’t just succeed on its own terms — it proved to at least one other developer that people wanted this, and unlocked a finished game that had been sitting half-built for two years. Fender describes Sunset Summit as a mix of his favourite things: co-op games, climbing, and megastructures.
What You’re Climbing With
🪓 Axes
The core climbing tool. Everything else is built on top of getting these into the rock.
🪢 Ropes & Drones
Both exist to help other people. Item delivery drones ferry gear to stranded friends.
🦘 Pogo Sticks
Filed under “unconventional,” alongside umbrellas and booster pills. Use at your own risk.
📻 Walkie Talkies
For when proximity chat isn’t enough — which, on a mountain, is most of the time.
The tool list tips the design intent. Ropes and delivery drones exist specifically to help teammates, which means the fastest climber’s job isn’t to finish first — it’s to set up the people behind them. In an eight-player group that’s the difference between a race and an expedition.
Eight Old Friends, Literally
👴 “Old People” Is a Listed Feature
Buried at the bottom of the official feature list, after proximity chat and the in-game camera, sits the bullet point: “Old people.”
It’s not a gag. The framing throughout is “a team of up to 8 old friends on a group hike” — and the pun is load-bearing. You’re pensioners, taking a hot air balloon to a floating island, to climb a mountain, with pogo sticks.
That’s a properly distinctive identity in a genre that otherwise defaults to anonymous climbers or generic adventurers. It sets a tone before you’ve pressed a button, and it’s the sort of choice that makes clips travel — which, for an eight-player co-op game living or dying on word of mouth, matters more than any feature on the list.
📋 What’s in the Box
• 1–8 players in co-op, with offline solo play supported — so it isn’t dead if you can’t field a group
• 16 handcrafted climbing routes across 4 distinct floating islands
• Roughly 16 hours of playtime
• Multiple routes per summit, letting you take the same climb from different angles
• Regular checkpoints and instant respawn on falling
• Proximity chat and walkie talkies
• A realistic in-game camera for taking photos
• Hot air balloon travel between islands
The Price Is the Headline
💰 $4.99, and Currently 38% Off
Sunset Summit is available on PC via Steam now for $4.99, with a 38% launch discount putting it near three dollars.
For roughly sixteen hours of content, sixteen routes, eight-player co-op and offline solo support, that’s an unusually generous ask — and it’s the sort of price that removes any argument about whether it’s worth trying with friends. Getting seven other people to commit to a purchase is the hardest part of launching a co-op game; at three dollars each that conversation gets considerably shorter.
No end date has been given for the launch discount, so if you’re organising a group, sooner is better.
⛰️ Climbing
🤝 Co-Op
🎙️ Proximity Chat
🏝️ Floating Islands
📷 Photo Mode
👤 Solo Supported
Who’s Making It
👻 Joe & Andrew Fender — the DEVOUR Brothers
The pair previously teamed up on DEVOUR, the co-op horror game that has sold over 7 million copies. Sunset Summit is Joe’s deliberate move away from horror, and it’s about as far from DEVOUR’s tone as a co-op game can get while keeping the same core idea — a small group trying to survive something together.
🤝 Future Friends Games
Founded in 2017 with a stated mission to help indie games get the love they deserve. Their catalogue includes CloverPit — currently past 5 million players — alongside Queen’s Domain, Slots & Daggers, Exo One, Laysara: Summit Kingdom, Tiny Aquarium and On-Together.
Hi there! I’m Marie, also known as CtrlQueen. I’m passionate about keeping up with the latest in gaming news and sharing my insights. RPGs steal my heart with their rich narratives and immersive worlds, but I also love unwinding with fun, casual games. Whether you’re here for deep dives into game mechanics or just to chat about your favorite casual game, you’ve found the right place! Let’s game and explore together.
