First of all, I have to give credit to the beautfiul artist SoupyG,
who made the picture for this game and posted it on the Steam Community. Which I used as a picture for this guide.
I hope you don't mind me using this masterpiece Soupy.










Second, most of the pictures and gifs found in this guide are found from the internet. The images used belong to their respective owner

The Note
THIS IS MOSTLY A GUIDE WHERE I EXPLAIN THE GAME, AND THE WAY I THINK IT SHOULD PLAYED, YOU DON'T HAVE TO TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY. AND IT COULD ALSO CONTAIN SPOILERS OF THE FEATURES IN THE GAME IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THE GAME BEFORE.

This is the point of the game where you just saw the opening cutscene and got out of your little house.

After you leave the house, you should go to settings and graphics options, and set the games pixel to be "medium rare", I'm saying this because I personally think the game looks absolutely the best on these settings. Because it gives it a nice pixel feeling, like it's an older game.
The "small and tasty" could work out too.
The all polished "tiny and sharp" graphics really don't suit the game.

(This is my personal opinion, everyone can choose the way they want it, I don't blame them.)

Right after that, the first thing you should do, is just follow the flow the developers intended it to be. Go around a path made for you and come up to the characters around the beach and listen to what they have to say.
Alot of characters have some interesting things to tell you, or quests to give. So do them if they tell or ask you to.
Quests that are like for example, collecting shells. Don't have to be done right away. You will progress with the quest as you play, don't rush collecting them.
As I said before, talk to other characters. They are the way to progress further into the game and learn about stuff, which in the beginning of my playthrough I found kidna boring. But later on I realised how nice it is...

The Mid Game, this is the part of the game where you've almost explored the entire map.

Here you will start getting alot of new items to use, not only because of doing quests, but from also exploring the island. Thing such as a bucket, shovel, pickaxe or a fishing rod in the game will be used very often while finding new places.


These items are also gonna be useful for the other quests. You can also get alot of money, just by digging up chests. In which some of them you can even find golden feathers. Which always come in handy when going on a Hike.



At this point of the game, you will also discover the activites you can do around the small island.
One of them is "Beach Stick Ball".
It's a really fun, beach game where you literally play volleyball, but with a stick! The place is not too hard to find, but the game isn't hard to play either. It's more like a "Easy to learn, hard to master" type of activity. This game, or should I say sport can be competitive. Try getting as many hits with a stick, and you maybe even end up on a Steam leaderboard! Yes, it exists!
A small tip from me is to follow the balls shadow, it shows excatly where the ball is in the air. Try to predict where the ball is gonna go. If the ball is getting hit far away from the net, expect the ball to be very fast. Try getting 30 hits with a ball for an achievement!

Another activity I have to mention is, Renting a boat.
This was the feature that was added in the last update of the game long ago. But it made a big impact on the game, and I absolutely love it! Driving around the map with a speed boat is beautiful.
Before you can free roam around the map with a boat, you have to beat the race from a certain someone who made a "race track" for the boat. Complete the race in under 45 seconds and you can get a pretty rare achievement that not alot of people on Steam have. It's not that hard, just don't try to rush it too much, if you learn the race checkpoints good enough, you could easily beat it in about 35 seconds.

There is also a Fishing mechanic which plays a huge part in this game.
At some point in the game, while exploring the map. You will stumble upon a character that seems to be peacefully fishing, you talk to him and in the end he gives you a fishing rod. You catch a few fishies and cool. But, the fish you sell can be sold for coins or traded for baits. Baits make the fishing process way faster. So it is recommended using them if you got some in your inventory.
In the game, there are some fish that can only be found in certain areas. Or we could say that each fish has its own spot where it can be caught on the map. It could be up all the way on the Hawk Peak, or all the way down in the ocean.
If you trade enough fish, the duck who you sell the fish to is eventually gonna give you a book to keep track of which fish you caught. By catching every fish from the journal you get a nice little achievement for your patience and hard work catching those fishies, but it doesn't stop there. You will also be awarded with a fishing rod made out of literal gold, which attracts special kinds of fish (yes, there is more then the journal says). They are not that hard to catch after you get the golden rod. But its nice and relaxing when you don't have any baits and you have to wait for the moment the fish bites.

End Game, by now you've probably reached the Hawk Peak and achieved the main goal of the game.
But the whole game itself, doesn't end there.

Once you achieve the main goal, you can continue exploring the map. And this is the part where you try to find characters that you maybe missed during the original play, or maybe just want to talk to them more, and see if they got something else to say.
The End Game, or the second run is the part where the most players are looking to get the remaining
achievements or explore the map to the last corner.

While exploring the map, you will stumble upon a bird called Avery. They will challange you to a parkour race around the map. You will find them at the start of that certain race. And you have to use shortcuts so you reach the finish first and get the award for winning. But to make it fair, Avery in every race sets a certain amount of golden feathers that you can use. Even with a lack of feather, you shouldn't have problems if you explored the whole map already.
There are a total of 3 races where you can compete against Avery, sometimes they even tell you the time you finished the race in. But even if you lose, you can always ask for a rematch to get your revenge. As the award for winning the race, Avery gives you a medal that can be took apart to get the gold coin that the medal is made out of. By completing all 3 races succesfully you will get an achievement for all your running and flying across the map.
Some of the harder achievements that take some time are "Feathers Forever", "The Fish Are Biting Today" and "Green Thumb". Mostly because they take some time be completed.

The Fish Are Biting Today achievement, which I already explained how to get. Is a bit more luck based, but still takes time to complete because of the waiting for the fish to bite and the amount of fish you have to find.

The "Feathers Forever" achievement can be obtained by collecting every single feather in the game. This includes the 2 silver feathers which make you run faster and jump higher with each one collected, which could prove really useful while doing the parkour races against Avery. Some of the feathers can be found just by exploring the map and looking around. While some can be obtained by completing quests for others around island. Or just simply buying them with the certain amount of coins per feather. There is also 1 golden feather that has to be dug up on a secret location on the map. To find that spot where to dig, you need to find a treasure map and read it carefully for clues of the treasure.

Another time consuming achievement, "Green Thumb". Is obtainable by flowering every plant sprout around the map.
This achievement adds a tiny bit of a puzzle element to the game. Because to flower the plant sprout, you have to hold a bucket full of water in your hands until you pour it on the sprout. While holding the bucket with water, you cannot double jump. The game doesn't let you. You can jump once, and glide with the bucket, but that's pretty much it. You can't climb nor double jump. Which makes this achievement even more difficult. You have to find the route between the ocean/river and the sprout so that you have to jump as less as possible, otherwise you can't flower the sprout. Some of the sprouts are next to each other, so they are way too hard to find, which gives some sort of relief while doing this achievement...

For those who don't want to spend alot of time looking for feathers and plant sprouts around the map. They can use an Interactive Map[voxelse.github.io] where you can literally see every single collectable or a part of a quest locations. This can help alot to those who struggle with finding the last few items they seem to be missing. Just leave the things you want to see on the map ticked and the map will show you excatly where it is and information about it, if there is any.



Once you get all of the achievements, and open all or most of the chests. You could go for a game of a Beach Ball Stick, or rent a boat and drive around. Or just simply go and fish for the rare kinds of fish with your golden fishing rod. It's up to you.

Well hey, you made it until the end! You went on A Short Hike and had some fun time!

In all seriousness though, thank you for reading until the end, I've made this guide by myself and I would really appreciate it if you liked or maybe even gave an award to this guide.
Means alot to me!

That's it for now, see you next time!