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Crafting A Tiny Open World: A Short Hike Postmortem

GDC Festival of Gaming · 521.4K views · 2020-03-27 · 31:07

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Overview

Adam Robinson-Yu's GDC 2020 talk on how he shelved a big project to prototype what became A Short Hike. He covers the solo development process and technical choices like a pixel shader over low-poly models.

On Hacker News

HN people cite it for solo-dev inspiration and for the rendering technique behind the game's look.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2020–2022

Topics

Indie game developmentGame designComputer graphics & rendering
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a short hikegdcsolo developmentpixel shader

What people said

butz · 2020-12 · Recommendation

You might want to watch this for inspiration: Short Hike Post-mortem ( [VIDEO] ) about single developer struggles. Of course, this is one of successful stories, so your mileage might (and will) vary. Give yourself tight deadlines and see if you can stick to them. Do not be afraid to bail out early, if you see that game development is not working out. I'd suggest keeping your daily job until you at least have minimal working prototype of your game and get positive feedback. As for games on mobile platforms, be prepared if you will create something new and unique - it will have dozen of clones on day three after launch.

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NortySpock · 2022-12 · Reference

Not the same method, but as I recall the developer of the game A Short Hike did a similar procedure - mostly to allow him to quickly draft 3D models and hide the low-poly models, artifacts, and "glitches" behind the pixel shader. [VIDEO] GDC presentation by the developer of A Short Hike My review: a fun, calming, and enjoyable 2 hour game with a heartwarming ending.

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annnoo · 2022-06 · Reference

Maybe not the greatest story but definitely one of the loveliest games I've played was A Short Hike. It is a kinda short (~5-6h) feel good game in which you more or less just have to explore a holiday island and meet different other Animals The developer held a talk on the GDC how he made the game: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by GDC Festival of Gaming, played through YouTube.

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