If you’re looking for a cozy game where you get to freely explore nature with cute graphics and chill gameplay, A Short Hike is a game I’d recommend for you. I enjoyed the game and despite the title, it was not exactly a ‘short’ hike and got plenty of things to enjoy and accomplish.
A Short Hike: Download Info
I’m supposedly on a holiday but my mind couldn’t take off work and I ended up working whole day, so I directed myself to play this game instead to chill and I’m glad with that decision and feels like the right game to play.
The premise of the game is pretty simple: you want to get a cellphone reception signal and you were told to take ‘a short hike’ to the top of the mountain to get a signal to make a phone call. To get to the top, you need to get ‘golden feathers’ that allow you to climb and fly further, which you can get from exploring and doing quests.
The length of your ‘short hike’ depends on you. You can also take lots of detour to explore the island to interact with other characters and help them, get items and achievements, and do other optional side story quests.
For me, I finished the game in about 2-3 hours, that includes completing some side quests but not all of them, so there are still a bunch of content to do.
I got lost pretty often thanks to my own poor sense of direction, so if you want to focus on completing the game first, it should be pretty fast. You can still revisit the game and continue with the world progress even after you trigger the game ending, so don’t worry.
The dialogs and characters are charming and interesting, some of them are pretty funny and silly – you get to help a kid telling you around to find a bunch of seashells, someone asking you to compete in a race, an invite to play a game of beachstickball (you read it right, yes), and so on.
There are a bunch of things to do in your way like fishing and collecting all the fishes, watering plants to make flowers, find treasure maps then solve the riddles, and more so for those who enjoy being completionists, you can look out for these as there are achievements to mark if you’ve done them all.
The game does not show you explicitly where to go except for some board signs here and there, so personally I enjoy taking my sweet time exploring and finding out new things around though I got lost pretty often, hahah – but that’s part of the journey! You do not get an overall map of the area, but we do get a compass to help out.
I feel there’s this certain charm to it – there’s this sense of discovery and wonder as you go further to see what more the area has to offer, without having to worry for character dying to start over again, and trying to remember parts of the area and retrace your steps to rediscover things such as using a new tool to unlock new things in previous areas you visited.
Sometimes I get a bit stuck because I forget things (like where did I park my boat? The guy told me he’ll be at the graveyard, but where was it again?) – but eventually I managed to find my way around or I end up discovering new paths or distracted by other things in the way.
One of the most memorable thing for me is the speedboat – I didn’t expect it to go that fast and can go straight up to the land so I get stuck sometimes like in these clips – but don’t worry I got myself back on track soon enough! What pro moves, I understand, haha.
@devpotata Speedboat attempts in A Short Hike game - It's a cute cozy and chill game that I do recommend! It's just I'm not good with navigating the speedboats hahahah I triedd #ashorthikegame #ashorthike #indiegames #cozygames #cutegame #gaming #vtuber #vtuberclips #vtuberEN #ENvtuber ♬ original sound - Devonazure CF G-34
End of game spoilers ahead:
The end of the story tugs at my heartstrings that there is more to why the character wants to find a reception to make a call, and the conversation about family I could quite personally relate to. It gives an extra emotional end to my journey, and also to see the change of dialogs of some characters you met after finishing the climb.
I like the small touch that in the final dialog with Aunt May, our character recaps some of the things they did in the journey, like learning how to fish and playing beachstickball game. It reminds me of those outdoor vacations I had in my childhood when I had the energy and time to explore around nature in wonder then come back excitedly to tell my family about my experiences when I come back.
There’s this sense of achievement of reaching the top to see the pretty scenery, and taking the flight off the top to enjoy the view of places you visited from the skies and the controls that allow you to glide around freely.
However, I screwed up my first flight and it ended up dropping to be anticlimactic like in this clip lol. I redid the climb to try again and made a better flight after to feel more satisfied about the final flight :’)
Overall, I had fun with this game and I plan to come back to it to complete the rest of the things or just enjoy walking around the scenery to chill. A part of me wish there’s a photo taking feature since I’m a sucker for that kind of thing to keep memories – I took a bunch of clips and screenshots instead!
It’s a charming, cozy game you can enjoy at your own pace. I’d love to hear of your experiences or if you have other games with similar vibes to recommend for me to try!
I want to try to spend more time cleaning up more of my games backlog, and will update here with other games I’m up to! I’m streaming at Twitch so you can check out my updates there~
