When you’re looking for games to play with a buddy, sometimes you just want to work together in a comfy setting, sitting back on your couch or over Discord and enjoying a story together. Hidalgo looks to provide that in a lovely way, based on our playthrough of the demo. After a successful Kickstarter campaign that you can still make late pledges to, Hidalgo is expected to come out May 2026. This should give the team at Infinite Thread Games plenty of time to craft and perfect an already pleasant experience. Here are our thoughts on the demo of Hidalgo, which I played on Steam for this preview.
You (and your optional extra player) play as Don Quijote and Sancho, along with their trusty steeds, as you adventure across a storybook-like environment that is conveyed as being built by a loving family in their house as a way to tell the classic “Don Quixote of La Mancha” tale with their children. It’s an adorably realized concept that continues to delight as you trot around the world of cardboard, cotton, and construction paper. While you’re exploring, you’re asked to finish minor tasks, like herd sheep, move things around, and do little fetch quests. It’s usually minor stuff that even a couple smarter kids could complete with a little effort. Your horses also have their own set of skills, allowing them to carry important items or push objects, for example. Combining the team of four’s abilities makes for a nice gameplay loop of exploring the area, finishing a little puzzle to continue the story, and sometimes encountering a boss that’ll require some cooperative finesse.
The big draw of Hidalgo is the lovingly created world that you’re exploring through. The backdrop of the story being told as a giant handcrafted project makes every little rip of paper, or bundling of strings, or bulk of rocks be worth noticing and seeing how they made it look created by simple in real life materials. The strings that ferry our main protagonists along don’t get too distracting, and the movement of the characters imparts a toy-like wonder to their gait. It’s not super detailed, but why should it be? It’s the perfect mix of casual visuals and gameplay for the audience they’re trying to attract.
We’re looking forward to following the development of Hidalgo. The team looks like they’ve got some really neat ideas for different levels and environments, and we hope they’ll take advantage of the story they’re telling. For it to be worth the price they’re asking, it’ll probably need a bit more content than what I’ve seen so far, but with a release date more than a year away most likely, there should be plenty of time to glue together what should be a fun romp with a friend through a tried-and-true novel. Wishlist the game on Steam and follow Infinite Thread Games.
