A Short Hike, an indie game designed by Adam Robinson-Yu and released in 2019, is exactly what it sounds like: a short hike. You play as Claire, an anthropomorphic bird, as she attempts to scale Hawk Peak in a quest for cell reception. The game takes place entirely in Hawk Peak Provincial (the game is Canadian) Park, a delightfully designed world that you can’t turn around in without smacking into some charmingly strange NPC or highly specific side quest. It’s a lovely little adventure game—emphasis on little. My first playthrough took around two hours, even with me being an infamous lollygagger, and the world record as of posting for speedrunning rests at one minute, twenty-five seconds, and six-hundred and sixty milliseconds. 

This is the main criticism people have of the game—it’s too short. A quick glance through user reviews on sites like Metacritic will show that practically every negative review and several of the positive reviews bring up the game’s length as a point of contention. People feel that they aren’t getting the bang for their buck, or that the game is over-hyped, or that they just wanted there to be more. Hell, look at the reviews of pretty much any shorter game and you’ll find people praising the content while bemoaning the length.

And they do praise the content—A Short Hike is just my personal favorite in a whole slew of beloved indie games with interesting worlds and diverse narratives that also happen to be rather short. This is pretty understandable, as many of these games are made by small teams working on small budgets. While indie teams are capable of pulling together massive undertakings like Hollow Knight or Undertale, I think that these games should be regarded as a fun exception rather than the rule for one simple reason: normalizing shorter games lowers barriers to entry.

To put it in simpler terms, I think that if we uplift and really carve out a market for shorter games, we can make it easier for people to start making games. If there’s a real audience and precedent for short games, then suddenly making a game feels like much less of a trial when you don’t have to live up to industry standards created by massive companies. 

Heck, Robinson-Yu has even spoken about how he made A Short Hike after seeing the success of other short games such as Minit. Previously, Robinson-Yu had made a number of Flash games, but wanted to try and take on a more serious project. So, he began to work on…a game that is not A Short Hike. That actually comes a fair bit later. Before it, Robinson-Yu spent over a year working on a sizable RPG. He began development on A Short Hike as a fun little side-project, a bit of side enrichment that provided a distraction from the creative rough patch he was going through with the RPG. Eventually, he decided to temporarily shelve the RPG to work on A Short Hike full-time after being inspired by other successful short games.

No one can say whether or not what would’ve happened if Robinson-Yu hadn’t made that decision. He might’ve finished the RPG. He might not have. Either way, I’m glad he made the choice he did, because I know it ended well. He made a great game, and with that momentum he’s made more. The foot is solidly in the door.

Because that’s the thing—even if you don’t particularly like short games, you have to admit they hold a vital space in the Indie Game Ecosystem as a way for fledgling developers to really spread their wings and get their voices out into the wider consciousness. 

The thing I love most about indie games is how out-of-the-box they can get—especially when compared to AAA games—in terms of both gameplay and narrative. When it’s just a handful of weird people trying to make a weird game, unrestrained by industry expectations and beholden only to themselves, they can make a seriously weird game! They can make something strange and delightful and beautifully fresh, and I want people to make those games. 

By encouraging short games, we can get more people making games, period. It can encourage people to get started, help them find their bearings in the world of professional game development, and everyone gets some pretty dang good games out of it! It’s a net win.

So next time you’re feeling a little bored or just looking for a new game to play, try picking up a smaller one like A Short Hike. I promise you won’t regret it.