A Short Hike is, at its simplest level, a game about climbing a hill. However, it’s best played by putting off that task for as long as possible.

Claire, a young bird, is visiting her aunt in Hawk Peak Provincial Park. There’s a vague fugue hanging around Claire as she mooches around her aunt’s island home, waiting for a phone call. Except, there’s no reception down at the beach, finally giving her the impetus to climb Hawk Peak itself and, in the process, gain those few precious bars.

It’s important to note that Claire is not the cliché of a teenager too often found in this situation. She’s not a mopey child, and she isn’t on the edge of learning valuable lessons about the joy to be found in life—none of that claptrap. She’s already a decent person, and she has a good reason to be worried about receiving this call. Climbing the mountain isn’t something she’s forced into, but rather something she’d been meaning to do anyway. And this frees up the atmosphere to create something absolutely sublime: a game about just being a nice person in a nice circumstance.



The island is a big space packed with other animal characters. Some will chat, some will ask Claire to complete simple fetch quests, others will offer her help and advice. All this should encourage you to explore the lower areas of the island before making your trek. There you hunt down shells, dig up treasures, and begin gathering the game’s most important resource: golden feathers.

These feathers, based on the impeccable logic that having them in your pocket makes you “feel lighter,” allow you to climb higher. Yes, you’re a bird, and yes, you can fly, but gaining altitude still seems to be a challenge. Climbing is the best way to do this, and the game gates your vertical progress with higher climbs, requiring more stamina, and thus more feathers.

Except, what’s so joyful here is you’re far more likely to get distracted by running a race against a rabbit or looking for a nice plastic spade for a frog. There’s no rush here, no sense of being hurried to finish your goals. It’s a game about chilling on the island, with the plan to hit the peak at some point before the day is through.

The graphics can be as low-resolution and pixelly as you wish, from enormous chunks to a crisp view. The crunchier end is the intended, but because it’s an after-effect, it can be quite nauseating when swooping around corners and the like. It’s one of the very few occasions when sharpening the art up gives it more character, the cuteness more apparent. This is all then boosted by fun, breezy writing that’s whimsical without falling into that “Wholesome” hole of everyone talking to each other like five-year-olds.

By the time you reach the peak, you’ll have made friends, won races, chilled out, and enormously enjoyed the swooping, flying mechanic. And then, as the wind blows, you’ll soar.