Game #1292: A Short Hike

 We've time for one short hike before New Year's.

 Full disclosure, I actually played A Short Hike last year with my girlfriend, but this year gave us a physical release, and so, I give it a proper entry. I started from scratch, and finish the game in about an hour, it is a short hike after all!

 The game is immediately charming as it looks very jaggy, like a DS game. Characters are anthropomorphic animals, coated in cell-shading which makes them pop. The entire game is set in a small Island, lots of lush greens and yellows, it's quite pretty to look at. What may not be to everyone's liking is the game's humor, there are plenty of NPCs who talk in ALL CAPS and get overly-excited over dumb things, it's no Shakespeare, and it may be a bit too dumb for some.

 The game has a single objective, reach the top of the Island to get reception on your phone to call Claire's mom. How you go about it... that's on you. The entire game is open-ended, you are thrown into the island and left to your own devices when are where you go is up to you, however, your main goal will actually be to collect golden feathers which govern your mobility. Each golden feather gives you an extra jump and increases the amount of time you can climb and dash, the latter is mostly needed for optional content, however. So as open ended as it is, the more feathers you have, the higher you can climb the island, which means access to more areas, and more areas means more NPCs, activities and, yes, even more golden feathers.

 The game is a ton of fun, and there's so much silly stuff to do and find. For instance, a couple of NPCs will ask you to play Beachstickball with them, in which you try to hit the ball with a stick towards the other player. You'll also come across treasure maps, so that you can dig for treasure with the shovel you find. You can even find a bucket, to water flowers that grow into trampolines, and, if you search well enough, you'll even be able to drive a boat, and even partake in a checkpoint race through the sea! There are other simpler quests, such as finding a certain item somebody found, or find X amount of seashells. There're a lot of activities, and since the game is rather small, it's not too convoluted. When I first played with my girlfriend it took us little over 2 hours to finish everything we came across, this time around I finished most sidequests in little over an hour. And it was just as fun as it was the first time around.

 What adds to making the game such an entertaining romp is how agile Claire is. From the very beginning of the game you have access to a very smooth glide that helps you get towards most places, and the more you play, you are rewarded with more and more mobility, so that the entire Island becomes a playground. Even growing plants adds more trampolines, which means more ways to gain air and just travel around the small island. It's quite brilliant really.

 A Short Hike it's exactly what it says on the tin, but it's also one of the most amusing games released in the past generation of games. It's well designed, with a very brisk flow that keeps rewarding the player in some way, the golden feathers you get the more fun you'll have moving around, but also, access to more areas, then there are all the sidequests which will either gain you new tools, to open up more places, cosmetics, or even more golden feathers. It's a really fun cycle, it's a really great game.

 8.5