A Short Hike: one evening to the credits, 2½ for 100%
A Short Hike’s finish lines in evenings and weeks, plus Steam’s achievement stats on how few players go past the credits to 100%.
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Prices, platforms and subscriptions checked on October 26, 2026.
Play A Short Hike now if you can spare one evening: Main Story averages 1½ hours in HowLongToBeat’s player-submitted times, as listed on Deku Deals, and Completionist averages 4½ hours, about 2½ evenings. The developer’s own estimate in the November 2021 console launch announcement agrees, at 1 to 2 hours to complete and 4 to 5 hours for every achievement or trophy.
Most of the planning sits in the gap between those figures. The credits take a night, and seeing everything triples the time.
Three finish lines, counted in evenings
HowLongToBeat splits the game three ways, and two of the three land inside the same evening.
| Measure | Hours (HowLongToBeat, player-submitted) | Evenings (hours ÷ 2) | Developer’s estimate (2021 announcement) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main Story | 1½ | 1 | 1–2 hours to complete |
| Main + Extras | 2 | 1 | Not given |
| Completionist | 4½ | 2½ | 4–5 hours, all achievements or trophies |
Hours: HowLongToBeat player-submitted averages, as listed on Deku Deals. Evenings: hours ÷ 2, rounded to the nearest half evening, with ties rounded up.
Main Story and Main + Extras both come out at one evening, so picking up a few side tasks on the way up doesn’t cost you a second night. Only Completionist runs past the first.
Any average blends players who raced with players who wandered. What a HowLongToBeat average measures covers how far to trust one at your own pace.
When does A Short Hike count as finished?
66.0% of Steam players hold Hawk Peak, the achievement for reaching the top, and 54.6% hold The End, for finishing the game (Steam global achievement stats). Feathers Forever, for finding every feather, drops to 15.8%. The rarest of the 12 achievements, Green Thumb, sits at 11.0%, so no more than 11 in 100 Steam players can hold every achievement.
Most players who see the ending stop there. A 100% run is something a small group chooses to chase.
If you’re weighing whether any completion run earns its extra time, when a 100% run is worth the hours sets out the general test.
The trophy list on PS4 is one longer, at 13 trophies against 12 achievements on Steam and Xbox. The 52 TrueTrophies members who finished it put the time at 5 to 6 hours, 2½ to 3 evenings. On Xbox, the modal time for all 12 achievements is 4 to 5 hours, from 1,774 TrueAchievements members.
At 3, 5 or 10 hours a week
If you get three hours a week, the credits fit in one sitting and the Completionist run takes 1.5 weeks.
| Finish line | Hours (source) | Weeks at 3 h a week | Weeks at 5 h a week | Weeks at 10 h a week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Credits | 1½ (HowLongToBeat Main Story) | 0.5 | 0.3 | 0.2 |
| Everything on Steam or Xbox | 4½ (HowLongToBeat Completionist) | 1.5 | 0.9 | 0.5 |
| PS4 trophy list, upper figure | 6 (TrueTrophies) | 2.0 | 1.2 | 0.6 |
Weeks: hours ÷ hours per week, rounded to one decimal.
On a five-hour week, every Steam or Xbox achievement fits inside seven days.
The extra three hours stay on one mountain
Hawk Peak Provincial Park is one island, and the three hours between the credits and Completionist are spent across it. Fishing along the riverbanks, swimming by the lakeshore, helping other hikers and hunting hidden treasures fill them, going by the Steam store page.
The achievement names cover what’s left: every feather, every fish species traded in, a set of parkour races, a boating challenge under 45 seconds, and a sprout to water wherever one grows.
Treasures do double duty. Collecting them is how you reach new heights, so time spent on them before the summit also makes the climb easier.
A Short Hike in one-hour sittings
An average session runs about an hour on the developer’s itch.io listing. At that pace the credits take one or two sittings, and everything takes four or five.
Short sittings suit it, and games for short play sessions that still have credits lists more built the same way.
Each version keeps a cloud save: Steam Cloud on PC, Save Data Cloud for Nintendo Switch Online members, and Xbox cloud saves on Xbox.
For handheld play, the Steam version is Steam Deck Verified from Valve’s test in March 2022. The Switch version runs in handheld mode and is supported on Switch 2, where it behaves as it does on the original console.
What does a finished run cost per evening?
Divide the price by your evenings and the 100% run comes out cheaper per night than the credits alone.
| Finish line | Evenings | US list price, $7.99 (Steam, Nintendo eShop, Microsoft Store; checked Oct 26, 2026) | Steam’s lowest recorded price, $3.99 (SteamDB, May 2, 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credits (Main Story) | 1 | $7.99 | $3.99 |
| Everything (Completionist) | 2½ | $3.20 | $1.60 |
Cost per evening: price ÷ evenings. List prices from Steam, the Nintendo eShop and the Microsoft Store; lowest price from SteamDB.
Waiting for a sale saves $4.00 at most, set against an evening you could have this week.
Game Pass doesn’t include it. Cloud play on Xbox comes with Game Pass Essential, Premium or Ultimate, but only once you’ve bought the game.
Before you buy: the Microsoft Store copy is an Xbox Play Anywhere game, so one purchase covers Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC.
Climb to the summit tonight, decide on 100% later
Main Story is the measure to plan on: one evening to the credits. Completionist adds an evening and a half on top, and that call is easier once you know whether the island has held your attention.
For a second one-night game, What Remains of Edith Finch also fits a single evening, and short games sorted by the evenings they take runs from one evening up to a week.
