In her poem “Nostos” (text below), Louise Glück writes:
There was an apple tree in the yard —
this would have been
forty years ago — behind,
only meadows. Drifts
off crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor’s yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from tennis courts —
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory. (Gluck)
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In A Short Hike, created by Canadian game designer Adam Robinson-Yu, you play as a young anthropomorphic bird – Claire – who is exploring a towering mountain while on a wilderness vacation, surrounded by familiar faces, random quests, sports matches, treasure hunts, all while aiming to reach the top of a meandering hike to the summit. What do we know of this place? The world is soft, uncomplicated, friends existing in this endlessly summery harmony. There is fishing and running and deep care, the world existing almost ripe for the picking – with no effort on the part of the player, quests appear in each conversation, achievable goals presented, information laid out. The player is able to wander and yet never feel lost, fall and fly while cradled in a sense of safety (literal; there is no fall damage) . Yet – the player is given complete control over the pace of the game, the areas explored, the quests undertaken.
I argue that A Short Hike is a meditation on the nature of aging – of looking back at one’s childhood and its perceived simplicity, and specifically crafts this narrative – distilling specifically that crucial moment of aging into independence – into an immersive, audio visual gaming experience.
–
Glück was an award winning poet, one of the most highly decorated to ever live in the English language. She was known for her sharp ability to distill the most complex human emotions into simple, accessible prose – her deft turns in language. In the way poetry like Gluck’s engages all senses, evoking personal memory and association to portray this particular shared experience of coming into one’s self in childhood, so too does A Short Hike: through its wandering game nature it reflects the rich experiences and sought desires of its players.
In Wandering Games, Kagan notes how “wandering simulators” are reflective of the player’s embodied understanding of space – she highlights how simulated contrast in immersive theatrical performances are as a different-medium example of the same concept. It is through walking that the audience considers what real or fictive space is. I believe that spatial imagery in poetry invites a similar mechanic – what is really on the page, what is in your mind’s eye, what world is being described? – and in the case of a Short Hike, the visual and aural imagery presented forth in the wandering game evokes emotions relating to the player’s own unique understanding of their own mental conception of space and identity over time.
As Claire begins the game, she – like the players – lacks experience with its mechanics. She is told how to dive and glide, how to gain golden feathers, how to climb. As the player grows more ability, the early phases of the game quickly give way to vaguely harder puzzles, forest exploration, and quickly scaling tall walls. Previously difficult, seemingly impossible jumps (if tried) are achievable. From there, the player can split – choose to explore or achieve the game’s purpose, talk to others, find their missing things. Closer to the summit, the game shifts to being slightly more platformer – requiring a bit more technical skill and problem-solving ability than the walking simulator of the early-game. This jump in ability reflects real-life growth further imbued with the narrative of aging and “leaving the nest”.
The summit of A Short Hike is the final stanza of the work. Claire mentions the world outside – her mom’s surgery, aging. A scary thing, but quickly soothed. The game is a soft nest of safety, though reminders of age burgeon through it and in the mechanics of player improvement. A Short Hike, in how it invites the player to get lost in its beautiful imagery, deftfully jars the player into stillness and personal and emotional contemplation through its final phone call – after the forced stillness and peace of the summit, and flying all the way down to see one’s progress, the game utilizes the methods of manufactured skill building (gaining feathers) and physically gaining altitude (the game prompts you to go “up” as a metaphor for achievement) to reflect the shifting peace and growth in one’s memories of their late childhood years.
I am not too emotionally close with my parents, and haven’t been since I was younger than Claire. Still – the final call to her mother at the summit, after spending so much time with her innocence, wit, and youth, reminded me of a simpler time of life, where emotions were more freely spent, said, and given, when overcoming obstacles simply felt like traveling towards something shining and guaranteed, and the world was wholly unconditional: not yet so complicatedly heavy. It is to childhood that we compare all of our following experiences. After reflecting on this, I closed Claire’s story and she, too, fell into memory.
Kagan: https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5445/chapter-standard/3962604/Introduction
Glück: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2020/gluck/poetry/
