Short Trip Review

Short Trip made me yearn for a life that I’ve never lived. A life that I can never live. 

If you’ve ever watched a Studio Ghibli film or played Animal Crossing, you almost definitely know the feeling I’m referring to. It’s a wistfulness about what your life could have been if only you were born in a different time, in a parallel universe. How sweet it could be to live in a world without our technology or politics. How simple it could be to walk to the local market with a basket in hand, fill it with fresh fruit and pay the stall owner with a shiny gold coin.

When you reach the end of the movie or game, reality seeps back in and you shake off the feeling in the hours or days that follow. But for that short trip it took you on, you were free.

Short Trip, created by Melbourne solo developer Alexander Perrin and published by 2pt Interactive, is described as an “interactive illustration”. It opens with a brief message stating that it was hand drawn with pencil over the span of five years. If you care to hear more, you can flip through the “About This Game” section on the title screen for an explanation of how that’s even possible. In summary, the game’s assets were all hand drawn with graphite, individually scanned in and then layered into a digital environment to create a quaint little town inhabited entirely by cats.

Playing as a feline tram driver, your singular task in this world is to run the scenic railway. You use simple brake and accelerate controls to move through the landscape and stop neatly at the tram stops to allow the cat villagers to board. You begin in town and work your way up the mountain, passing by churches, market stalls, orchards, windmills and everything else you’d expect to see in an idyllic little village as you go.

It’s not an especially challenging assignment, but that seems to be the point. The Steam page for Short Trip makes it clear that the game was meticulously designed with relaxation in mind. Perrin describes it as a “slow play” game, which is defined by researcher Sonia Fizek as “a reaction to the ever present bombardment of digital stimuli and a way to carve out spaces to think and contemplate within the oversaturated digital sphere”. That’s a scholarly way of saying that intentionally slow games allow us to fight back against the constant demands of the digital world on our attention, and give us time to think without having to stare at a blank wall.

Short Trip looks like little else in the cosy space

I’m not sure that I had any profound thoughts during my playthrough – my pensive opening thoughts for this review certainly aren’t unique – but I enjoyed watching the cats in trench coats and hats bob along the platform in a rush to board my tram. The odd sound their non-existent feet made as they bounced off the pavement scratched an itch in my brain that I didn’t know I had.

Art and sound design work closely together to create a world that feels rich despite its small size and lack of characterisation or traditional narrative. The illustrations are truly stunning. As much as I hesitate to reference another artist’s work, I have to mention that Short Trip’s art style recalled fond childhood memories of Beatrix Potter’s creature-filled stories and E. H. Shepard’s illustrations of Winnie the Pooh for me. Perhaps it wasn’t even the art itself, but the well-dressed animals living almost-human lives that conjured such images. Perrin’s art is undoubtedly in its own lane when it comes to style and level of detail.

One journey up to the windy mountain peak takes about five minutes in real time. There are no passengers left once you’ve hit the final stop, so you’re free to hop out and take a quick look around before turning back. There’s also no clear ending, a slight disappointment but not a surprising one given that Short Trip veers away from many of the expectations we have of games with its interactive illustration premise.

You can go back and forth along the tram line as many times as you please, and I found myself noticing more details in the landscape with each lap. There’s also the addition of a Schedule mode for a more gamified experience. In juxtaposition with Classic mode, where there are “no time constraints; no worries”, Schedule mode introduces scheduled stop times for you to adhere to and measurements of parking accuracy. At the end of your run, you’ll be given a total score based on the balance of these two factors. Both modes have their merits but neither will keep you busy for too long. 

Final Thoughts

Short Trip lives up to its name. It offers a pleasant experience that doesn’t outstay its welcome. I couldn’t help but wish for something more; to disappear deeper into the cosy rabbit hole. Yet I found myself thinking a lot about how the game was made – perhaps because it’s framed that way – and I empathise with the artistic struggle to just finish a long-running project. Ultimately, I was happy with the brief jaunt that the game offered me on a sunny afternoon.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher