A Short Hike: Or, another Great Reason to Call your Mom
I really should listen to my girlfriend more. And not just about videogames.
Also, I should call my Mom. And so should you.
Trust me, it’ll be important later.
Several months previous to me writing this essay my lovely, beautiful, intelligent, funny, sweet, beautiful, nice, and beautiful girlfriend told me about a videogame she had begun playing on her Nintendo Switch called “A Short Hike.” Her selling point was that it was an adorable game and that, when she finished it she cried because it was so beautiful. I have to admit, in full honestly, I listened to her while I played Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which is to say, I did actually listen to her, but I processed the information while playing an objectively brilliant videogame that had already claimed 100 hours of my life and was sure to claim at least 100 more. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to play A Short Hike, it’s just that I was already hiking around Hyrule looking for Koroks, tears, and Shrines.
A Short Hike was filed into the cabinet in my mind palace under, “Games I should play because they’ve been recommended to me.”
That file is pretty damn big at age 35, and I know it’s only going to increase.
It ain’t a bad thing either. Just to clarify. There’s always going to be another videogame to play, and I’m happy to have placed A Short Hike alongside videogames like Crysis, Dark Souls, Fallout: New Vegas, Hello Kitty Island Adventure, Super Mario Galaxy, and Dragon Quest 5 in that ever expanding file.
And there it remained until I built my PC and saw it on Steam for $8.
I mentioned it to my beautiful, intelligent, beautiful, funny, and beautiful girlfriend who reminded me that she had already reminded me multiple times that I should play that game. Since it was a day or so after Payday, and I had at least a couple of pennies in my pocket (purely metaphorically speaking I largely use online banking these days(and I refrain from keeping pennies any longer than I have to on general principle)) I bought it and started playing.
Sure enough my nice and beautiful girlfriend was right (she always is) and I fell in love with this beautiful game.
And, just like her, I cried once I’d reached the end of the game.
Game cover provided by Moby Games.
A Short Hike is a fantasy, action, open-world game with diagonal-down perspective. It includes some platforming, puzzle elements, and flight simulation (the protagonist is a bird) but I would argue the game also borrows heavily from life simulator games like The Sims and Animal Crossing. The main verbs of the game are walking, flying, climbing, talking, swimming, and exploring and anyone who plays the game is sure to perform all of these verbs either for the sake of completing the narrative, or else because they, like me, simply disappeared into this game.
The narrative follows a young woman named Claire who’s a bird. Picture the ability to play any of the neighbor-npc characters from Animal Crossing in their early 20s. The game begins with a cut-scene showing a purple car driving in the night and through a few dialog boxes we learn that Claire’s mother is dropping her off at her aunt’s for a few days. When the game begins Claire emerges from the cabin in a public park where her aunt works as a ranger. Claire has been waiting for an important phone call (which will become important in just a bit) but her aunt explains that there is no cell phone reception in the park except for at the peak of Hawk Peak Trail. Claire demonstrates reluctance to climb the mountain since she’s never done it before, but her aunt encourages her and so Claire begins to walk to the peak.
From here it’s a short hike.
Also, oh my god…I just got that.
My horrible jokes aside, it was in fact a short game. And I didn’t hate that.
Researching for this essay I read several reviews of the game and consistently the length was discussed, most often in a positive light. Several reviews described A Short Hike as “fat-free,” referring to the sheer bulk of content that is often attached to videogames for the purpose of extending playtime. This is a concept I’m not unfamiliar with since, as of this writing, I’m playing Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. These games are great, and I’m not attacking them. But each of them are perfect examples of the sheer scope that many open world games occupy in the current videogame market. A Short Hike contrasts dramatically against these games not because it’s a lower quality (it isn’t(this game is just as good(yes I said that)))but because it dares to offer the player a short experience rather than attempting to occupy as much of the player’s time as it can.
The game creates several small moments that are interesting for their gameplay mechanics as much as they are a way to develop emotional identification with its characters.
Claire is not a perfect character. Nor is she a blank character the player can imprint themselves upon completely. I mean…she’s a bird, for a start, but more importantly her dialog and body language give her an emotional depth. Claire is a young woman, and being young she’s obviously trying to find her own sense of self and navigating how she reacts to other people and their unique foibles. She’s not a shy or nervous person; she’s just a tad awkward. And as the narrative continues and we discover why she’s so preoccupied this nervousness makes sense.
But in terms of mechanics each of the encounters with various npcs along the hike are opportunities for the player to learn new “verbs.” For example in an early encounter Claire meets the only two members of the Climbing Club. These two people are…peculiar, but they also provide the player the opportunity to learn how to climb. Likewise just a few moments earlier Clair will encounter a young bird who’s looking for Seashells. This is a basic side-quest that any videogame player will recognise but it still provides the player with the “verbs” “explore” and “acquire.”
While researching for this essay I found an article published on Nintendolife.com on 29 August 2020 by Stuart Gipp titled “A Short Hike Review.” True to its name this article was just that, a general review of the game, but Gipp’s prose offered more than the usual tack of videogame reviews because it’s obvious he played the game to completion. In one passage he discusses the pseudo-Metroidvania of the game when he writes:
You'll come up against walls in your progress as you play – often literally, a wall you're not able to climb – but, brilliantly, your options on how to circumvent this are completely free and open. Even in the early game you're able to explore a sizeable chunk of the island; that first Golden Feather at the visitor's [centre] is signposted to some extent, but we went off exploring beforehand, managing to find some seashells, dig up some treasure and even stumble across a Feather that made us feel like we'd broken the game, only – of course – its discovery was entirely within the game's parameters. That's another thing A Short Hike excels at: making you feel like you're pushing at its limits. Getting one over on it. Even when, of course, you're not.
Again, A Short Hike isn’t terribly complex but it’s not trying to be. These small moments are design choices that give Claire’s attempts to climb the mountain so she can just call her mother an emotional resonance.
Playing A Short Hike is as much an emotional experience as it is an intellectual one. While I was collecting sea-shells, and the various golden feathers necessary to actually climb the mountain I was testing the controls of the game more and more not so that I could simply move about the world easier, but also to see if I could meet more people.
Spoiler alert, I did.
I met some kids on a beach who had made up their own game which involved hitting a ball with sticks they had found along the path. Suddenly the mechanic of acquiring items wasn’t just about picking things up. It was about using these mechanics to make connections with other people. And even though these people were children they still demonstrated a sizable humanity which was refreshing given the fact that children too often assume a kind of idealization in video games in general.
I could go on and dissect each of the interactions in the game with a weaponized precision to understand their mechanical functions, but that would be dissecting the butterfly without putting it back together. It may be a tad maudlin but I want people to play this game and discover the simple joys of it for themselves.
Which brings me to the ending.
And potential spoilers.
I generally don’t care too much about spoilers for films, novels, comics, and yes videogames. This is because whenever I read or play a work of art I care less about the content of the art itself and am usually more focused on how the art is structured. I blame the novelist, screen writer, mad-man, and former creative Writing professor Luke Goebel for that, but that’s honestly another essay.
I recognise though that not everyone feels the same way. Given the emotional power of the ending of this game I wouldn’t blame my reader who wants to experience the game for themselves and thus quit this essay here.
With that said, let’s get to the part where I cried…a lot.
I collected as many of the golden feathers I could find and decided to get to the top of the mountain, regardless of whether or not I’d missed some side-quests. I wanted to see the top of the mountain. In no small amount of time Claire reached the top, the last vestiges of the world sinking into the lavenders and violets of the thinning atmosphere before electric snakes of pure green-blue light began to seep into the horizon line. An aurora Borealis was filling the sky as Claire celebrated her triumph.
And then the phone rang.
I wasn’t ready for it. In fact I don’t believe anyone is really ready for the phone call.
Claire’s Mom calls and after a few short dialog boxes she tells Claire that while Claire’s been away she had a major surgery done. It’s not specified the reason for the operation but the point is Claire didn’t know and when she asks her mother why she didn’t share the info she’s told that her mother didn’t want her to worry.
And it was about there that I started crying.
And then I started thinking about my own mother.
And then I cried some more.
I wish I was a better writer to really explain what I felt in this moment, or what I actually thought. I kept trying while writing this essay, starting and rewriting sentences and paragraphs over and over again. I kept trying to find the right combination of words to really communicate what this emotion was, what these thoughts were, and why I felt and thought this videogame was so important and so wonderful. Alas, for all my supposed wisdom and intelligence, the fact is I was just overwhelmed by the sheer emotional impact of this moment.
I just kept crying every time I thought about it.
Understanding that I couldn’t properly communicate what I felt and thought, I was relieved when I found an article published on Kotaku.com on the 9 February 2020 by Narelle Ho Sang titled, “The Bittersweet Journey of A Short Hike.” This article is beautifully written, and most importantly gave me a beautiful insight into someone else’s response to this section. Near the end of the article Sang writes:
The phone call explained so much more. On the other line was Claire’s mother, who had sent Claire away to stay with her aunt May. It was revealed that the mom had to have surgery, and did not tell Claire beforehand. From Claire’s reactions, it was a pretty big deal even though her mother tried to downplay the severity of the situation. At least, that’s how I interpreted it. Claire’s mom repeated that she was fine. Claire protested that she could have been there for her.
When I read the exchange, tears welled in my eyes. I quickly looked up at my own mother who was busy in the kitchen preparing dinner for the family. Claire and her mom’s discussion was unexpected and earnest. For me, it was a stark reminder of the hard reality about growing older, and the dreaded subject of death and health concerns that we all face when thinking about our respective loved ones. It’s something I think about often with every new year that dawns.
I’m, as of this writing, 35 years old. And what that implies is that I’m closer to the reality of death, and not just my own. The fact is my parents are aging, and to quote John Mayer, “Don’t know how else to say it, don’t wanna see my parents go.” Part of my job at the public library where I work is processing and indexing obituaries published in the local newspaper. I know, having indexed obits for people as old as 101 and as young as the same day they’re born, age is not the determining factor for how and when someone will die. But death aside it’s more than that.
Looking at Claire, standing on a literal mountain, while the world was filled with colors, I was reminded that I was having this moment and my mother wasn’t. My mom has played videogames, but they’re not her hobby the way they are mine, nor are they the defining media that guides her existence. My mother takes walks in the woods, she paints watercolor paintings of flowers and trees, she reads art history books and goes to Museums, she buys caterpillars and raises them into butterflies, she reads poetry and writes in the mornings while she drinks coffee. She will probably never play A Short Hike, and never experience this beautiful moment for herself.
Then again, she’s one of the three people who read these essays, so maybe she will in her own way.
A Short Hike is, to border on a maudlin sentiment, a game about life. But rather than overload the player with options it provides a small handful of mechanics, and several minor episodes between characters before it crescendos into one of the most beautiful moments in any videogame I’ve ever played. Life is not a game, but it is a series of choices and actions that leads one to a moment that can forever impact you before the monotony of existence settles back in.
A Short Hike, much like life, is short. The brevity is almost painful,but upon completion, with a tear in my eye (or more accurately tears) I let Claire leap off the top of the mountain to return to her aunt.
Phone in my hand, I texted my Mom and I told her I loved her.
And then I texted my girlfriend and told her she was right (she always is). I’m glad I played A Short Hike.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
8.16.2024
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