Near the top of the
mountain you
encounter a writer
who is working on
the ending to their novel, while two other
characters debate whether it should be
happy or sad. Does that reflect any
difficulties you might have had figuring out
how it should finish?
I mean... I have lots of worries and the world is
kind of crazy and stressful, and so I wanted to
leave people with more of a warm, hopeful
feeling at the end, because that’s what I would
like to give to myself and other people I know.
The writing conversation was actually a little bit
about my RPG – I was having a hard time
figuring out how to make a story that was
personal to me, but also kind of fit into the
structure of an RPG. With A Short Hike I really
wanted to stick with something that was low-
stakes and a lot more personal. I guess those
characters were a little bit of me, just like the
frustration of trying to write something and
finding it a lot harder than I anticipated to write
a story, or even just dialogue.Has A Short Hike’s success changed
anything for you?
I’m not sure. Before this, I released a lot of
game jam games. Some of them were kind of
stupid and small, and I’m wondering if I need
to make sure things that I release from now
on are more put-together, I guess? It’s more
pressure in the sense that I’m worried I won’t be
able to make anything as successful as A Short
Hike again. But I feel lucky that it did well.Might we see A Short Hike appearing on
more platforms in future?
I can say right now I’m looking into consoles,
I think. I’m definitely looking into that. I’m
not ready to say when it’s happening, but
yeah [laughs].Adam
Robinson-Yu
Creator, A Short HikeQ&A
THE MAKING OF...
engaging minigame.” He hoped to recapture
a similar feeling in a different way – “so it’s not
like you’re just walking straight to the top; it’s not
brainless, but it’s not hard either” – but perhaps
with a little less tension. An element of risk and
reward, but nothing that would detract from the
otherwise calming ambience of the setting.
Something that required some low-level thought,
that still provided a sense of accomplishment
from reaching the summit.
Hence the feathers. There are 20 of them
in all, scattered across the mountain and its
surroundings, gained by completing sidequests,
or just through thorough exploration. Each one
extends Claire’s stamina meter, letting her climb
up cliffs or flap her wings to gain extra height
while she’s hovering or gliding. It works as
a subtle form of gating: when you haven’t got
many, you need to figure out routes between
incrementally higher spots at which you can rest
to restore the gauge. In the mid-game, you don’t
have to worry quite so much. But towards the
peak, that all changes, as the chilly climate
prevents your stamina from regenerating until you
find somewhere warmer: a dip in a restorative
hot spring does the trick, but making your way
safely between these is more challenging.
“I felt like it gave the game a solid structure,”
Robinson-Yu says. “I kind of consider the top of
the mountain as like the boss of the game, and
then the rest is all about prepping for it – trying
to find as many feathers and learning how the
game works. Once I figured that out, that’s when
I really felt like, ‘I’ve got a game here.’”
Now he just had to build everything else
around it. By January, Robinson-Yu had
contacted Humble about making it into a
Humble Original, and drew up a formal pitch.
The story was just starting to take shape. “I wrote
about how the player is like, worrying about
something, and they want to take their mind off
it. And I guess the thought of getting to the top
of the mountain is something that can take them
away from their troubles – they can get lost in
nature and focus more on what’s going on
around them rather than what’s going on in their
head.” The finer details, such as the precise
nature of Claire’s concerns, came later, emerging
organically as Robinson-Yu continued working on
the game.
In the meantime, he got in touch with
composer Mark Sparling, with whom he’d
previously worked on a game jam project.
Having grown accustomed to working on his
own, Robinson-Yu concedes he was a little
nervous as he suggested the approach he
wanted for the game’s score. “I think I mentioned
Animal Crossing and Firewatch – I wanted it
to sound like nature and hiking, but also kind
of be cute and cosy at the same time.” In return,
Sparling suggested that the music could change
dynamically as you pass through different areas
of the mountain, introducing additional layers
and instruments. There was some further back-and-forth, but one of the first pieces Sparling sent
was what Robinson-Yu considers the game’s
main theme: you hear it near the beginning, and
then again, to moving effect, once you reach the
summit. “That was the first piece we nailed
down, and that set the tone. I’m not a musician,
so I have a hard time describing exactly what he
did. But at that point, I was just like, ‘Wow, he’s
doing a really great job.’”
Though things were progressing well,
Robinson-Yu still wasn’t confident that his game
would find an audience, let alone resonate with
people. Right up until the Humble Original
release, he remained uncertain: he was glad of
the funding that had given him a dependable
revenue for the duration of development, but his
expectations were low. “I wasn’t sure this game
without combat or without any really well-defined
goal or anything like that would excite people,”
he admits. “What convinced me to dive in and
make this project instead of my RPG in the first
place was that it was going to be short. I could
at least finish it quickly so I could just get
something out. And if people found it a little bit
boring, if I’d only spent a few months on it, then
it wasn’t a big problem if it didn’t do well.”
Claire’s story ultimately ends on an optimistic
note. The thing she was worried about? It turns
out everything is going to be fine. And when
Robinson-Yu likewise reached his summit, real life
imitated art. The response to A Short Hike’s
Humble Original release allayed many of his
fears; four months later, the reaction to the game’s
Steam launch from critics and players alike was
overwhelmingly positive. Awards attention
followed, with a BAFTA nomination plus a clutch
of DICE Awards nods. Then, most gratifyingly of
all, came two IGF wins: A Short Hike won the
big one – the Seumas McNally Grand Prize –
and the public-voted Audience Award.
“I’ve seen so many videogames and movies
and books and stuff that have left an impact on
me as a person and I’ve always wanted to try
to make something that would maybe have
some kind of similar effect,” he says. “That was
always an artistic goal of mine: whether it’s
a game or... anything that I create, that eventually
I’ll make something that’s meaningful to people.”
How about immediately? He smiles. No doubt
Adam Robinson-Yu has more mountains to climb.
For now, though, he can look out happily from
this vertiginous peak – and the view from the
very top looks spectacular. Q