A Short Hike

[rynling]

A Short Hike was released for Nintendo Switch about three weeks ago, and my only regret is that I waited so long to download it.

You play as an anthropomorphic bird named Claire who’s spending the weekend on holiday visiting her Aunt May in Hawk Peak Provincial Park, and your goal is to climb to the top of the mountain so that you can get reception on your phone. Since you’re a bird, you can jump down and glide whenever and wherever you feel the need. You can also fly for short periods of time, and you can collect Golden Feather upgrades to extend your flying time. There’s no combat, no danger, and no puzzles to solve. Although you’re free to go anywhere you like, the main climbing trail is clearly marked. If you get lost, you can just jump down and glide to an earlier point on the trail. It’s all very relaxing, and the soundtrack is adaptive, meaning that the music changes depending on the altitude and weather.

Because the game is so overtly referential, I don’t think it’s lazy to call it a cross between Animal Crossing and Night in the Woods. Some of the (completely optional) mechanics, such as fishing and digging up X marks on the ground, are pure Animal Crossing, as are the character designs. The dialogue never gets grim or dark, but it’s a little weirder and less performatively wholesome than Animal Crossing. The writing is unobtrusive but clever, and Claire has a lot in common with Mae from Night in the Woods.

Meanwhile, the exploration elements are very Legend of Zelda, and the game looks a lot like Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, from the cell shading to the head-to-body proportions to the 3D modeling of the landscape. There’s an option to increase the frame rate and make the graphics less pixelated, but the Nintendo DS style visual atmosphere is lovely even if you don’t harbor any particular nostalgia for that era of gaming.

If you go straight up and down the mountain, the game takes maybe half an hour to play, but you can easily spend another half hour going off on side trails and having conversations with the various people you meet during your climb. I imagine that you could spend even more time with the game if you wanted to find every Golden Feather and record every species of fish in your journal, but the game’s menu screen isn’t set up in a way that makes you feel compelled to do so.

I've read a few reviews that criticized A Short Hike for being too, well, short, but I don't think that's a problem. I am no stranger to the task of collecting all 900 forest sprite poos or evolving all 900+ species of battle monsters or getting all of my fantasy fighters to Level 99, but I also love being surprised and delighted by short, self-contained, and immensely satisfying small-studio games.

I’m not sure how I feel about Nintendo asking $20 for this game, which is a bit expensive for its category, but honestly that seems like a reasonable price to pay for the experience of a solid hour of uninterrupted joy.

Comments

[runicmagitek]

I'm so glad you enjoyed this game! It resonated with me for all the same reasons it did with you, too 💕

Also, I try not to scream whenever people are critical of a game being short and knocking that as "not good", but wow, are some people just testing my patience there. I'm extremely tired of 60+ hour games (hell, even 30+ hour games) for multiple reasons. If I can have some quality time in an hour or two? Hats off to the creators for conveying their story and gameplay so well in so little time. That's a feat, not a detriment.

We need more short games like that!

[rynling]

Agreeeeeeed.

I have an unopened copy of Persona 5 in my closet that's still in its plastic shrink wrap, true story. Sometimes I look at it, and it looks right back at me. I feel very guilty, but I cannot.

And one day, if the stars align, I may be able to play more than the first twenty hours of FFXV.

That being said, I've started to make my peace with only playing the first few hours of a game just to try new things and experience something different. Not every game is for me, and that's okay. I guess this is kind of expensive, but so is was going to see movies in theaters, so I try not to beat myself up about it.

[renegadefolkhero]

One thing I love about Game Pass is I just play a game until I've had my fill and move on, and sometimes that's 5 minutes and sometimes it's 10 hours and both are perfectly valid as long as I'm enjoying myself. I don't always invest the time to "beat" a game I've started and I'm finally cool with that, and I think the lack of formal ownership helped. It has certainly sold me on the subscription model. Owning games is for the birds, man. Playing games is where it's at.

[runicmagitek]

*hears the mention of Persona 5 and Kill Bill sirens go off*

Oh god. Yeah. Persona 5.

I didn't grind or fuck around at all and tried to plow my way through the last quarter of the game just to be done with it. It took me over 120 hours.

A hundred. And twenty. Fucking. H o u r s.

There's a lot of cool things Persona 5 does, namely how stylish the aesthetic and music are, but the literal core story will take over a 100 hours, because why the fuck not.

Not saying you shouldn't play it. But like... I spent over two years chipping away at it. So if your copy stays in the plastic seal forever, I think that's 100% valid.

Also one day I will finally play XV. Maybe. I'm still very salty over the idea of XV :|

[renegadefolkhero]

I picked this up in the racial justice bundle and it is consistently recommended in that context, but your review bumped it up on my to-play list which is q u i t e long now thanks to aforementioned bundle so thank you for the review.

I feel like $20 is just fine for a 2-3 hour well-crafted experience (lookin at you, Goose Game) but $20 for one hour of playtime is a bit of a stretch, even for me. I guess it's worth noting these immersive exploration games ARE what you make them in many ways, so if the plan is to "just go up and down the mountain" the player might wait for a discount.

[lassarina]

I love both long and short games. For me, it's a lot about how efficiently the game space is used. I saw Persona 5 referenced above, and like, I don't feel the game efficiently uses its space (P3 did better). I don't like short games that feel rushed, but I love games that are The Length They Need To Be (Skyborn is a great example of this.)

This sounds really interesting, though, and I'll probably throw it on my wishlist until I clear something else out of backlog.

[dorchadas]

I played this game a few months ago and it's probably my favorite game I've played so far this year, and the length is a large part of the charm for me. So often with longer games, you have to just grind through the parts of the game that are obviously put in there to extend the gameplay, but there's absolutely none of that in A Short Hike. It's lovely for the entire playtime.