ONE DAY HIKE

About ONE DAY HIKE

ONE DAY HIKE is interactive fiction by kit (Kit H.J.), made in Twine and released on itch.io in 2023. It plays in the browser in about half an hour, and the maker states that no generative AI was used.

You drive for six hours through the rain into the Blue Ridge Mountains, cut the engine at the end of an unmaintained dirt road and set off into Jefferson National Forest. You are two days from the lake where the old camp used to be. You think of an old friend from childhood summers, and of your mother's house, and of why you came out here alone.

The story is told in second person, and its structure breaks apart as memories intrude: the troubled-teen camp, the instructor screaming at you to hurry up through the rain, the other exhausted bodies around you. Then the woods themselves turn dangerous, and something starts hunting you through the trees. The maker warns of homophobia, suicide, abuse, the troubled teen industry and wilderness therapy, animal death and body horror.

Players praise its prose and how it uses structure, and several say it moved them deeply. It is a quiet, literary horror story rather than a game of scares, and suits players who like short browser fiction such as Y O U or my father's long, long legs.

How to play ONE DAY HIKE

1. Open the itch.io page and press Run game to play free in the browser.
2. Read each passage and click the highlighted words to go on.
3. Use the sidebar to save or restart if you want to.
4. Play it in one sitting of about half an hour.

Tips

• Read the maker's content warnings first; the story deals with suicide, abuse and body horror.
• Take your time with the memory passages; the way the text is laid out carries meaning.
• Play somewhere quiet; it is all prose.

Questions