A short hike was a game I put about 10-15 minutes into about a year ago. I spoke to a few people about the nature of the game and that it seemed pretty fun from my first impressions, but that doesn’t quite describe A Short Hike and the whimsical nature of being young and exploring for the fun of it.

The fantastic Adam “Adamgryu” Robinson-Yu in their first solo game, A Short Hike, puts you in the role of Claire, a young bird who’s gone to Hawk Peak Provincial Park, where her Aunt May is a ranger. After a few short conversations with your auntie, who had thought Claire had already gone to explore the Park, she suggests the only place Claire will get phone service will be at the top of Hawk Peak. From here, the Park is open to the player.

The plot of A Short Hike takes place with dialogue between those at the park; there isn’t one core story outside of a person in their youth exploring a familiar yet somewhere they’ve not been since their childhood, seeing the locals while realising how much they love and appreciate their family.

Those that you speak to on the island range from the troubled artist full of self-doubt about their ability and will anything they paint be good enough for the exhibition they were invited to, kids creating a brand new game at the beach called Beachstickball, which I obviously had to have a rally of 10 and right after 20 to get all the rewards.

While the plot isn’t the deepest of the story, it reminded me of going on walks with my family when I was younger. I would sometimes wander off the beaten path on my own, grab a stick just like Claire and wander around; no purpose or a goal. I simply wanted to explore, which is perfect for this quaint game.

Something unique about the dialogue is that it’s exclusively also in these small text boxes above the character's heads, nothing new, very retro at this point, but the text used, that's the unique part. Adamgryu used the fact that text to him, mostly text messages, these instate messaging speak, depending on the character, the tone will change. Still, overall, it's very natural. If anything, it helps you understand a character's age and perspective. Older characters extended the text box and used full words, whereas Claire was short, to the point, lots of … or Nah or Yep. Younger children still learning, use many capital letters and extend the sentence.

The locals help clue us in on how the basic progression works. Simply get golden feathers or the externally rare silver fathers by helping out the locals and exploring the map. This could be as simple as playing the above game of Beachstickball to exploring the whole island to find shells which will be turned into a necklace for your Aunt May, who will give you a golden feather in return.

But Alex! I hear you cry. Why do I need these feathers? You’ve said I collect them but what for? Well, dear reader, that's a great question, in simple Claire needs a bit of help with flying further and climbing for longer. These feathers do just that. Each feather gives Claire an extra jump or, if flying, a flap, but as you might have started to twig onto, Claire needs to climb to the top of Hawk Peak. However, without at least 7-10 feathers, you won’t even make it to the halfway point or the mega climb, as I called it when playing.

I attempted to scale the mountain as quickly as possible, exploring the paths but seeing how far up I could make it. Upon making it beyond the “mega climb”, Claire’s feathers started to freeze as claire wasn’t wearing apparate clothing for being so high up, there are ways to defrost Claire's feathers, but even so, you’re capped on your ability to climb. As such, you probably could brute force the climb, but where’s the fun in that, well for me, half of the fun was exploring the island and seeing what was going on, the treasure hunts, making sure each NPC was spoken to, finding the mysterious island which turns out has a name called Pat’s Point which we only learned from talking to thanks Aunt May at the end of the game.

We learned to fish for the fun of it and started a collection log, and if I had more of an intensive, I might have finished it. A bird on its hustle collected and sold a bunch of golden feathers to the player. However, it was using this money to try and fund its college tuition, and for some reason, I made it my final goal after doing everything to get this bird its cash.

A Short Hike reminds me why I will randomly spend countless hours playing Old School Runescape. Because it’s a game with a vague end point of objective, but the way you get there is open to you, the fact that A Short Hike opens right away with an open island for you to explore and make what you will.

I wasn’t fully aware till later on while exploring I had enough money to purchase a boat rental. This is where I spend about fifteen to twenty minutes just going around the island, learning the boundaries and starting to flesh out the layout.

Talking about learning the game, the art style for A Short Hike is self-described by its creator as “crunchy pixels”, and rather than trying to make the game simplified aesthetic, he knew his own limitations, to work which what he knew more which was programming but also how as a solo developer you still need to have an eye-catching game, Adamgryu in a GDC spoke about how his experience “As a mostly unknown indie developer I really relied on social media like Twitter to get people looking at my work. So I think the aesthetic of the game becomes pretty important because you only have a small moment to capture people's attention and for small developers ... I think getting a look like this can be difficult or time-consuming”.

I adore this perfectly simplified, and just as the developer assumed, I filled in the gaps where the pixels were, I wasn’t always paying full attention to everything, but I still knew what was happening. I grew up playing a range of different video games in the late 90s and early 2000s, anyone from that era will tell you how amazing all of the games back then used to look, but when we all go back, very few hold up. A short hike took this concept for me and made it the vocal point. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it needs to grab your attention and keep you hooked with how adorable it is, and it did this flawlessly.

On a last note about the adorableness of A Short Hike, the sound design, my god, the perfect little footstep sounds, to mhmhmm sound effects of the characters talking, to the adaptive music depending where on the island you were, all, a chefs kiss, sure the adaptive part could have had more tuning, especially when I was on a speed boat racing around, but outside of that 1% nitpick point, it was perfect, it wasn’t overcooked, it didn’t throw it in your face, but the culmination of music and sound design comes to a climax at the end of the game with the art and a personal convocation for Claire that you can’t help but have a smile on your face with a tear slowing dropping down from an eye as you come to learn that your time is almost up.

A Short Hike reminded me of a time I had forgotten about in my own life when I wished to go on a hike, and I recommended you do to, but take a friend or two, turn your phones off, chat, say hello to those you pass and live in the moment and remember.

Call your mother, father and those that love you. They’ll appreciate the call more than you’ll ever know.

But with that, go and play A Short Hike. It’s a fantastic game to escape into and is getting a MUST-PLAY! Recommendation from me!

Thank you for reading. You can find my complete, unfiltered thoughts on my Podcast Too Long, Just Listen. Have a great day, and I hope to see you back ♡

My full gameplay without any sound.

References

A Short Hike. (2023, February 16). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_Hike

Robinson-Yu, Adam (March 27, 2020). Crafting A Tiny Open World: A Short Hike Postmortem