ShylockSimmonz's Review of A Short Hike

Great Variety and Simply Fun

User Rating: 8 | A Short Hike LNX

By shylocksimmonz | Review Date: February 20, 2023

A Short Hike can come off as a very simple game but it does have some unexpected depth to it. The overall goal is to make it to the top of the peak. In order to do so you must get a certain amount of golden feathers. Past this is where the depth comes in. In order to get these feathers you can find them or buy them. Either way you must explore the park. In doing so you will come across a wide range of characters with interesting stories as well as opportunities for additional game play. My favourite was following around a painter and finding out what troubles they are going through in trying to find inspiration. You will find a variety of items you can put to use such as a shovel which allows you to dig holes to recover money and other items. You can find treasure maps which will give you hints of where to find treasure. You will find a bucket which if you bring water to certain plants will help you scale some areas easier. This is all little things that added to the game play variety. There are some things the game could have done better. For instance there is no quest log so you have to remember what certain people wanted and where they are located. The game also could have used a proper map, there is a compass but that was of little help for me. The music was well done and added to the chill relaxation vibes that the game had going. The visuals were a mixed bag. While I thought colour palette was bright and was really pleasant the game was still a pixel game which meant not a ton of detail. It was better than ninety nine percent of pixel games but the style has limits.

I played A Short Hike on Linux. It never crashed and I didn’t notice any bugs. The game auto saves on exit as well at certain points throughout the game. This wasn’t an issue but a manuals ave system would have been a nice option. There was just one save slot in the game that kept getting overwritten and you can’t have more than one save game going at once. There was a resolution option; four other game settings and a v-sync toggle. Alt-tab didn’t work. Performance wise the game ran flawlessly and saw next to dips in frame rate.

Game Engine: Unity

Graphics API: OpenGL

Disk Space Used: 351 MB

Game Version Played: 1.9_v3

Game Settings Used: 1920x1080; highest settings; v-sync on

GPU Usage: 0-57 %

VRAM Usage: 538-657 MB

CPU Usage: 9-37 %

RAM Usage: 3.4-3.7 GB

Frame Rate: 134-144 FPS

Overall I had a good time with A Short Hike. It was relaxing; had good variety; and really you get out of it what you put into it with the exploration. It’s warts were minor and not game breaking. I finished the game in one hour and forty five minutes but I didn’t finish all side quests. I paid $8.99 CAD for it and felt that was well worth the money.

My System: