Mine.
Carry.
Place.
Cairn is a single-player voxel sandbox built around one hand-tuned loop: break a block, watch it crack through ten stages, carry the drop home, and set it down with a satisfying thock. A whole world, one block at a time.
No account. No installer. Cross-platform Java. ~11 MB.
The essence loop
The whole game is a broken block, so we made the block perfect.
Break time is hardness × 1.5 seconds, accumulating damage every 1/20-second tick. Destruction costs time; creation is instant. That asymmetry is the entire feel of building in Cairn.
Hardness × tick breaking
Every block has a hardness value. Hold to mine and damage accrues each game tick — dirt gives way in a heartbeat, stone takes a steady hold, obsidian tests your patience.
10-stage crack decals
A crack blooms across the targeted face and deepens through ten discrete stages. Release or look away and it resets — the wireframe outline shows exactly what's in reach.
Per-material voices
Stone, wood, sand, grass, glass, gravel, wool, metal — each a sound family. The block you step on clicks like the block you mine. Metal rings a little brighter.
Instant placement
Right-click and the held block snaps to the grid with a clean thock — no timer, no wind-up. Mining is where you pay; placing is where you're paid back.
Floating item drops
A broken block pops a little spinning copy that bobs, gets pulled toward you within a block, and flies into your hotbar with a soft pickup pop.
A 20-minute day
The sky lerps through dawn, day, dusk and night on a 20-minute cycle, with the ambient bed shifting under the light. Build by day; watch the shadows lengthen.
Cairn Classic
Play instantly. No download, no signup.
Cairn Classic is a browser slice of the real thing — mine and place in a small procedural world, right now, in this tab. When you're hooked, the full cross-platform game is one click away.
The Capture Kit
Broadcasting your build is trivial — it's built in.
F2 for a screenshot. F9 to write a real .mp4. F8 for a smooth cinematic camera. Plus a ready-made OBS overlay that reads the game's live state. This clip was recorded with Cairn's own recorder.
F2 screenshots
One key, a clean full-resolution frame straight to disk.
F9 clip recorder
Toggle a real .mp4 — a file you can drag anywhere.
F8 cinematic camera
Detach and glide. Eased motion that flatters a plain wall.
OBS overlay
A browser source that reads live state.json. No wiring.
Pricing
Free forever. The rest is optional.
Nothing gates the core loop — you never pay to mine, place, or build. Paid tiers buy convenience and cosmetics, never mechanics.
Cairn
The whole single-player game, forever.
- Full world, all block types
- The complete Capture Kit
- Local worlds & saves
Cairn Plus
A one-time thank-you with cosmetic block skins.
- Everything in Free
- Cosmetic block skin packs
- Priority preview builds
Cairn Cabins
Server-side backups of your worlds.
- Everything in Free
- Automatic world backups
- Restore any version
From the devlog
How the block gets made.
Why breaking a block takes exactly as long as it should
On the hardness×tick break formula, the ten-stage crack, and why destruction costs time while creation stays free.
The sound of a place: how Cairn's blocks got their voices
Per-material sound families, why stepping on a block matches mining it, and the music that waits.
Ship your play: the Capture Kit and a generous creator license
A built-in recorder, screenshots, a cinematic camera, an OBS overlay — and a license that says yes early.
The Quarry Dispatch
One email per drop. Nothing else.
Named quarterly drops, devlog essays, and the occasional featured build. No spam, unsubscribe in a click.