A Short Hike is an exploration game where you hike, climb, and soar through the peaceful mountainside landscapes of Hawk Peak Provincial Park. It was part of the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality on itch.io so I decided to give it a go.
The premise of this game is that you play as Claire who has come with her aunt to Hawk Peak Provincial Park. She has an important phone call but no cell phone reception so her goal is to reach the summit of of Hawk Peak to not miss this call. In order to do so, she needs to acquire golden feathers to give her necessary abilities to reach the top. To get these feathers, she has to complete various quests by the other hikers, campers, and beach goers.
At first, I found the default controllers a little hard to use. I’m so used to using space to jump, so when space was not the default jump button I was very confused. Thankfully you can remap the keys to better suit your play style and that made such a big different in my enjoyment of the game.
Most of the quests are fairly simple to complete and get the necessary reward. Some of them are not as clear, so I did have to lookup a walk through for my last quest specifically. I started to get to a point where I knew I was close to the end and just wanted to climb the summit, but was still too short on golden feathers to do so.
The game is like an open world where you can explore any which way you want, thus find feathers and money and quests in varying orders. I did find the map a little confusing and couldn’t always remember where certain location were which was a little tedious. But going through the game at your own pace is quite relaxing and peaceful.
Overall, A Short Hike is quite wholesome and chill to play. If you enjoy exploration and open-world type games you will enjoy this one. And if you’re looking for a low stress game to play, this one fits too.
What exploration games do you enjoy? Let me know with a comment below.
Great review! I also reviewed this game on my blog recently and felt the same sense of relaxation and enjoyment you describe.
This is on my Steam wishlost
Been looking at this too (also from itch.io bundle) and it seems very cute. Looking forward to trying it too 🙂
I just played this too – really enjoyed it!