Sometimes I go out of my way to try games that, at surface level, are not at all my cup of tea. And sometimes it goes pretty well; Stardew Valley ended up being a great fit, for example, and Undertale ended up being one of my favourites of all time. But A Short Hike did a good job of reminding me that some games really just aren't for me at all...
The music in this game is great, the art style is fine, and the world is well-realised. A Short Hike definitely has a vibe to it... but not much more? Long story short, I found this game aggressively boring. The main gameplay loop seems to be bumbling around until you find some person who needs help, then you bumble around until you find the solution. The game has a heavy focus on exploration, but the quasi-top-down camera angle and lack of a map makes remembering where landmarks are an absolute chore, and a huge portion of the game becomes just aimlessly wandering to where you think a point of reference was that you want to revisit.
I found the controls pretty janky too. Claire has a habit of pinging off into the distance if you dare to climb any surface with the slightest curve to it, and mapping Jump and Action to the same button caused me quite a few problems (not least during one of the races, when an NPC had positioned themself next to a rock I had to jump over, and accidentally speaking to them cost me the race more than once). The boat in particular controls like complete arse as well.
But do I think a Short Hike is a bad game? No. It's well made and a lot of thought and love has gone into it. The attention to detail is pretty great; I enjoyed little touches like digging up bones if you use the shovel in the cemetery. But it has been a long while since I have played something that I found as cripplingly uninteresting as this. If you get on with slow-paced, deliberately aimless, zero-stakes adventures then I'm sure you'd get on with this fine. But it turns out I don't.
The music in this game is great, the art style is fine, and the world is well-realised. A Short Hike definitely has a vibe to it... but not much more? Long story short, I found this game aggressively boring. The main gameplay loop seems to be bumbling around until you find some person who needs help, then you bumble around until you find the solution. The game has a heavy focus on exploration, but the quasi-top-down camera angle and lack of a map makes remembering where landmarks are an absolute chore, and a huge portion of the game becomes just aimlessly wandering to where you think a point of reference was that you want to revisit.
I found the controls pretty janky too. Claire has a habit of pinging off into the distance if you dare to climb any surface with the slightest curve to it, and mapping Jump and Action to the same button caused me quite a few problems (not least during one of the races, when an NPC had positioned themself next to a rock I had to jump over, and accidentally speaking to them cost me the race more than once). The boat in particular controls like complete arse as well.
But do I think a Short Hike is a bad game? No. It's well made and a lot of thought and love has gone into it. The attention to detail is pretty great; I enjoyed little touches like digging up bones if you use the shovel in the cemetery. But it has been a long while since I have played something that I found as cripplingly uninteresting as this. If you get on with slow-paced, deliberately aimless, zero-stakes adventures then I'm sure you'd get on with this fine. But it turns out I don't.