Play A Short Hike in multiplayer with 99 others in this April Fool's gag
It's developer-created but "unofficial"
A Short Hike is one of my favourite games and I've completed it twice, once on PC and once on Switch. Now I'm thinking of having another go thanks to A Short Hike 99, an "unofficial" multiplayer mode created by original developer Adam Robinson-Yu as an April Fool's gag.
Is it still a gag if you actually make the thing?
While the mod exists and is playable, it's not and won't be an official mode. That means Robinson-Yu is planning on keeping his server live for only two weeks.
As other tweets explain, this isn't a battle royale mode. There are very few ways for players to interact with one another in A Short Hike, bar standing one each other's heads, and some of the physics objects don't like dealing with multiple people.
Still, the reason I love A Short Hike is that it's a lovely place to hang out. It's nice to hang out in it with other people. Any person I've met in the mod - there are 18 people online right now - has jumped in front of me a few times, as if to say hello, and then we've simply jogged around together for a few minutes. Eventually one of us flies off a ledge and we go our separate ways. The perfect relationship.
If you own A Short Hike on Steam, you can access the mod by right-clicking on the game, going to Properties > Betas, and then opting in to "ashorthike99_mod". If you then load up and start a game, you'll connect automatically to the multiplayer server. If you own the game elsewhere, you can grab the mod/patch from Itch, where you'll also find instructions on how to install it and how to run your own server.