Hike!
Become a musher, assemble your husky sled, and race through the snowy wilderness!
2-6 players / 20-45 minutes / Age 9+
Game mechanics
- Drafting cards
- Building Patterns
- Race
Hike! is a light and fast card-drafting racing game in which players take on the role of mushers (dog drivers) competing in a dog sledding race. First, they assemble their husky sleds and prepare the equipment they will need for the race. They hand-pick the huskies for their abilities and pay special attention to where in the sled they place them to form a strong and harmonized team. And then, the race is on! Who will have the winning tactics and whose team will perform best in the treacherous terrain? The first one across the finish line is the winner!
Hike! was released on Kickstarter, where 3451 backers pledged 119 415€ to help us make Hike! a reality. Thank you to all of our Kickstarter backers who believed in us from the start! This page would not have been possible without you!
How to play
First, choose the huskies for their abilities – snowflake movement points, and place them into the sled. But careful! Huskies have characters and not all of them like each other, so be sure to match the neighboring cards’ edges.
Do you have the equipment to get through the treacherous terrain, and have you taken enough time to train and care for your huskies? Make sure that you are well prepared, once you start racing, every musher is on their own.
You are ready to race! Use the combination of your huskies’ skills and equipment to cover the longest daily distance. And may the best musher win!
Get the rulebook here.
Check out also this excellent preview/playthrough of Hike! by Rahdo Runs Through, which features a 2-player game setup. Rahdo had a Kickstarter preview copy, the components of the retail copy are better quality and include some additional art.
Events and traits expansion
If you like Hike! and wish to have an even bigger experience, the Events and Traits expansion is for you. It adds a hefty deck of 68 cards to the gameplay. It includes trait cards that players get at the beginning of the game and that give them a bit of asymmetric starting positions, and event cards that add another layer to card drafting, and present players with more options in the race phase. Event cards are divided into two groups – the majority of them are events that only influence the race track or the player that played them, and there are 12 event cards that include more player interaction and a bit of ‘take that’ element. Players can decide if they want these last 12 events part of the game or not. The cards include text in English.
From the start, Hike! was intended to be a light and fast family-friendly game, but it has grown a bit from the original idea during the playtesting process. Most of the design team and a lot of our early playtesters like heavier (Euro)games, so ideas on how to add more depth and strategy spurred spontaneously. We didn’t want to make all of them part of the base game, as we still wish for Hike! to be an inclusive game for all gamers, so we decided to offer them as an expansion. Beware, the expansion still doesn’t make Hike! a heavy (Euro)game! But it does offer an interesting twist that we think more advanced players will enjoy. For all of you who like to have options!
Dog well-being
Huskies are the stars of Hike! and the core of the dog-sledding team. If you google dog sledding, you will inevitably stumble upon controversy regarding dog abuse. We want to clearly state that there is absolutely no place for such behavior in Hike!. We see dog sledding as a team activity, where mushers and huskies work together, as a team, and they respect each other and care for each other. We believe no team member’s well-being should ever be sacrificed for sports achievement!
To underline this belief, we have decided to donate 0.5 % of the funds we received from every copy of Hike! ordered through Kickstarter to organisations that promote dog well-being. We have split the donation between 3 organisations: Mush with P.R.I.D.E. is an organisation that promotes responsible care in dog-powered sports, provides standards for sled-dog care, and conducts kennel inspections to make sure they respect those standards. This was the organisation that received the most nominations from our backers during the Kickstarter campaign.
We hope this small donation from our board game campaign contributes towards the effort of ensuring the well-being of sled dogs in real life.
Landscapes in Hike!
We are based in Slovenia, Europe, which is a beautiful country with a lot of mountains and forests. As outdoor enthusiasts, we thought it would be cool to include some of the places we like on the landscape cards. You can join us for a virtual tour here.
