Hiking Simulator 2018

HS2018 plays like an Early Access game that is is not finished. It seems thrown-together.

Hostile animals attack you with no means of defense. I tried it, but fighting bears and boars with kicking is ridiculous. I don't think there are any weapons to be found.

I looked at the forums for help- there are 11 posts and the most recent is Aug 12, 2019. It is an advertisement for a cookstove. The forum is so dead no one even reported it. EDIT- I reported the ad post and it has been removed, so there's that- at least something works LOL

Visually, the game looks good, but that aspect is incomplete as well. I ran the game on "Ultra" with a very nice system- I7 processor, 1080Ti, 32GB RAM. Glitchy shadows with that moving sawtooth edge! There is no movement to the aurora. Animals are not optimized- they seem disconnected from the ground.

I cannot recommend this as a casual game, a survival game, or a simulator at all.

my therapist told me to go for a hike instead of playing video games so often, so i found a middleground between me and my therapist by buying this game

it didnt solve my depression btw

Kind of pretty in spaces. You can play either seeing your character or with a first person view. At it's dark heart this is a hiking sim filled with mountains to climb, trees to see, and cute little bunnies. Aw. Too bad the bears hate you. So do the wolves and boars. Most of the animals are dangerous, but it's more that type of game.

I didn't like that at first, but amazingly you can outrun charging bears and wolves. Ditto the boars, though those suckers will chase you. I hit the statue that shall hereafter be called Freyr's temple and got chased.

Could a tame mode be added? It's had to admire models I'm fleeing. Thanks for fixing the fall instadeath from the first game though.

Map is huge, trust me, it is.

About the game
A singleplayer game set in an area full of snow and mountains.
There is a chance to encounter wolfs and bears.
You can play the game with either keyboard and mouse or with a controller.

The bad things
The character
The character in this game looks like something made in the late 90's.
There is no character creation. You can't even chose if you want to play as a man or a woman.
He have no backpack on, which seems a bit weird, compared to the fact that he is in the middle of nowhere all alone for days (small thing, yes. But still).

The graphics
The graphic is terrible in some parts of the game, while it can be quite beautiful in other parts.
The trees have no textures. The snow is squared some places. The ''caves'' seem so out of place, that you can locate them from far away. From a distance the bears in this game looks worse than the bears from the old tomb raider games (PS1).
Examples (running it on ultra):
Cave seems out of place
Graphics
Weird looking snow
Almost walking through the map / looking through the map

When you find a cave in the game, you can mostly just walk right through it. It's not solid, meaning you don't have to do anything the hard way (fighting your way through) and you can't climb them.
Example

The AI and about the animals
Everytime I found a wolf or a bear, they were just running around in circles.
Well, they were barely running. They would run to a spot, stop, turn around, run to another spot, stop, turn around, run to the third spot ect ect.
I had to get really close before they even noticed me too.
I never found a bear walking around by itself either. The ''bear cave'' was full of bears guarding a treasure.

Achievements
The achievements would be activated before i even found anything.
I found the treasure before i was even close to the cave where it's hidden.
I found the statue before i could even see it.
I found the alter with the human sacrifice before i was even inside the cave.

The controls
The game have full controller support, which is a good thing, since the game is terrible to play with a mouse and keyboard due to the mouse sensitivity.
I tried changing this in the settings, which didn't do anything.
There is no tutorial in the game. It's a pretty simple game, and doesn't require much of a tutorial. But a little tip in the corner saying ''Press C to go to first person'' for example. Wouldn't have taken up much of the developers time to add this.

No story
The game didn't seem to have a story at all.
You would go around finding all these weird things, like a treasure, a giant statue in the forest, a cave with a human sacrifice and there would be NO explanation for any of this. No notes near these things, no quests activated or completed, nothing.
It makes the game boring af.

Health, stamina, map ect
There is no health- or stamina bar in the game. Actually it would seem like you have unlimited stamina. I was sprinting the whole time i played this game.
Health... well, you can die. If an animal attack you. If you drop from a high spot nothing happens. I dont know if you would lose a bit of health, since you don't have a healthbar either.

There is no map in the game and all the areas look exactly alike. This makes it hard to navigate and figure out if you have already been to this place. There is a compass in the game though, so you can use this to get an idea about it.

The music
I just have to mention the terrible music at the loading screen as a negative thing as well lol.


The good thing
It can't all be negative right?
Well it's close to, but I have just ONE thing that i actually liked about this game. ONE THING.

Some of the graphics
The beautiful mountains in the back, and the northern lights.

All in all I would say that this game isn't worth the money, eventhough it's a cheap game.
The game mostly looks like something from the late 90's eventhough it was released in December 2018, have terrible AI and have no story at all.
Seems to me like the developers only cared about making some quick money.
I would rate this game:
1/10

seriously don't waste your money even if it is only $1.99.... the game a thrown together pile of garbage...I wouldn't recommend this game even if it was free

Terrible game at any price, AVOID

This is a steaming pile of garbage, it is absolutely rubbish, avoid!!

Do not spend your money on garbage!!!

Best game Ever!!!!!

I'm looking forawrd to playing the game more, so far im intrigued what can be done with the steam achievemtns for this game. For example, have to figure out how to die. For a simple game and the price you pay, you can't go wrong. The graphics are great for what they are and music/noises are great as well. I would take the time to play this game if you have a chance, where you don't want to think too much. Thank you Shoho games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8HYOIaz0ro

Okay, after this developer made Hiking Simulator 2017 in the GameGuru engine and stretched out the default terrain to make some of the worst looking "mountains" ever seen in a game.. I think he might have taken my review to heart...

So fast forward almost a year and a half later, and Hiking Simulator 2018 is created in the Unreal engine 4 so that we can get MUCH better graphics and more realistic mountains!

..But hold up. Before you think that Hiking Simulator 2018 might be well worth it's $1.99 asking price, you might want to watch my "First Play on Launch Day" Review seen here because the developer was afraid to show any real gameplay footage on his Steam store page here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcBboB_1rdE&feature=youtu.be

After playing this abysmal and horrifyingly BORING game, I was left feeling again that this developer put no real effort into this, and no real heart either. This is just a mash together of ASSETS he found on the Unreal marketplace. No real coding is needed because there is no objective, no score, no quests, no inventory, no nothing except your basic avatar asset running around the Unreal Asset environment he purchased.

I looked at the Unreal marketplace, and this looks like the environment asset the developer purchased, but I could be wrong as he might have bought a cheaper one and just stretched up the mountains himself:
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/snowy-mountains-landscape

Add in some winter tree and bush assets in the open snow areas of the environment and a few stupid simple AI forest animals and BAM! ...Easy peasy, "Hiking Simulator 2018" is exported and uploaded here to Steam!

Minimal effort. Zero Heart.. Zero inspiration.. and Zero care given to actually creating a "fun" or "engaging" game or world for the player to play in.


--- My Honest Advice To the Developer: ---
I highly advise the developer to STOP worrying about the "graphics" and spending money on "asset packs". Use a simple engine if you can't code such as the powerful Construct 3 engine and focus on creating a game that's actually "fun to play".. Make a game that YOU yourself enjoy playing even if it uses simple squares and circles, because I know damn well that even you don't enjoy playing these Hiking Simulator games you've made.


MY SCORE: A 10% score that actually isn't that much fun to play and my "fun" score is a 0 out of 30 possible. This game really deserves a ZERO because it has no heart and no soul at all.
..NOT Recommended ...even if it were free, it would be a waste of your time and 2 GB of good hard drive space. If you want to see pretty mountains, just use google instead as you'll likely have a much better experience!