Super Hiking League DX [Xbox]

Developed by Bit Ink Studios, Super Hiking League DX is a 2D platformer where an evil wizard wants to make the world perfectly flat, removing all of the mountains to achieve his goal. As Nelson – a member of the Super Hiking League – you are not happy. After all, what would a super hiking league do without any mountains to hike on!? To stop the wizard, you’ll have to compete in climbing races against likeminded hikers and nab all of the magic gems you can.

There are a few different modes available, from the standard Arcade Mode that will allow you to progress through the levels in a story style mode, unlocking new levels as you go - the CPU characters you’ll go up against here are surprisingly challenging, even on the lower difficulty levels, which came as a bit of a shock (to me - Allan was unfazed as always until quite a bit further in). There’s also Versus Mode, where you can face off against a friend or CPU to reach the gem (attacking each other to inhibit progress), and this brought out a lot of competitive fury between us. Likewise, there’s a Race mode which is the same as Versus (aside from no attacking), and a Time Attack mode that has you race against a preset time - and this is mega challenging to master.

Presented in a gorgeous, classic 8-bit style, with well varied levels that range from castles to climb, and forest-y trails, and different characters to unlock, each with different coloured clothing and their own little vehicles they’ll drive onto the start of each level with. There are extra options to change up the visuals, with screen curvature to give the illusion of a retro TV or different colour palettes/shaders. Likewise, the soundtrack is fantastically catchy and nostalgic, with upbeat retro tunes that stick in your brain.

Controls feel decent, with rope swinging that has three separate settings for whether you want automatic swinging or to have more precise, powerful control over it. Levels can be won or lost in mere seconds, with a single mistake costing you crucial time - and whilst there are flowers to grapple onto for a boost, the CPU characters are almost impossibly good at each level, so you’ll struggle to catch up. Winning is done in a “best of three” style, which can be great if you lose the first attempt, but absolutely brutal if you’re on a difficult level and just manage to succeed, knowing you’re then going to have to pull that off again. Playing against a friend makes for a very competitive time, and with levels ranging from short, medium and long lengths, it really ups the ante, as there are multiple points where things can totally change the outcome.

There’s a good bit of replayability here, with a local multiplayer mode available to face off against your friends across a couple of the modes. As mentioned previously, Versus and Race are too similar, so we feel that having a different task, like maybe getting to the gem and then back to the bottom of the mountain, or racing against a vertically panning screen to change things up a bit would have been cool, and would have differentiated these modes a little more.

Overall, we had a fun time with Super Hiking League DX, but found it to be a lot more enjoyable as a game against friends and family than the CPU due to the surprising level of AI difficulty. The kids had a lot of fun with it too, even in spite of how difficult they found it - and it encouraged them to keep trying with how fast it is. There are additional ‘Special Sets’ of levels to unlock, as well as an another difficulty mode and alternate characters to play as, so it’s well worth spending time to unlock everything. It would have been perfect for an online option to have been included too, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity, as the competitiveness would have been ideal for challenging people online. We’d actually love to see a sequel, maybe with evolved graphics (jumping to 16-bit possibly?) - as we had a lot of fun here. If you like the sound of this, then you can pick it up for £4.19 on the Xbox Store.

In the end, we decided to give Super Hiking League DX the Collecting Asylum rating of 8.5/10.

Have you played Super Hiking League DX yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x

Thank you to QUByte Interactive for the Super Hiking League DX Xbox review code!