Best short games for busy people
Sometimes life gets busy and finding time for games gets hard, but these short and sweet games are an absolute must play.
So many of us no longer have the infinite time we had as children to spend hundreds of hours on a video game.
Sometimes it’s because you have to take care of the kids, or because you’re too exhausted after work to sink dozens of hours into a game. Sure, you could spend a couple hours a day for a year trying to slowly make your way through Skyrim or Persona 5, but sometimes you really just want to sit down on the weekend and see the ending of a game.
We’ve rounded up ten of the best short games available today, and each of these should take five hours or less to finish. From amazing stories to incredible gameplay, there’s something for everyone here.
Sayonara Wild Hearts
Sayonara Wild Hearts is as much a game as it is an experimental pop album, which makes it a bit difficult to describe. It’s an autorunner of sorts, but it’s also a fighter, a shooter, and a rhythm game, all wrapped up in one stylish package.
The music is the main draw here, but it’s all presented alongside a gorgeous art style and slick gameplay, plus a surprisingly touching story that makes it all feel a little bit magical. It can be completed in just a couple hours, if that, so it’s definitely worth finding the time for.
A Short Hike
This is a short, simple game where you take the role of a bird taking a hike across a cute little island. You can do whatever you like on the island in whatever order you please, and you can do as much or as little as you like.
If you want to help fellow hikers, scale the island’s biggest mountains, or just sit back and fish for a little while, you can. The best part of A Short Hike is that it doesn’t tell you where to go or what to do, the journey is yours to define and discover.
Unpacking
The Australian-developed Unpacking has neither dialogue or a narrator, instead opting to go for a ‘show, don’t tell’ approach. The more you play through the story, the more you discover about the protagonist, uncovering their life through the simple act of unpacking and organising rooms.
Throughout the game, you’ll see what’s important to the protagonist through the things they keep with them all throughout adulthood, and what they leave behind when moving. It’s a message that’s much better told by saying nothing at all.
The Gardens Between
Another Aussie game, The Gardens Between is a puzzle game with an interesting twist. Each level is a tiny little island, and you have to manipulate time and space to figure out its secret.
Despite having two main characters, this is a single-player experience where both players are needed to solve each puzzle. And best of all, there’s a touching story underneath the fantastic puzzle design, just waiting to be discovered.
What Remains of Edith Finch
What Remains of Edith Finch has players taking on the role of Edith, the last member of the Finch family, exploring the family home to discover what happened to all of the other family members. Told through a series of supernatural adventures, your job is to stitch the timeline together and figure out how the family all fits together.
It’s a short game, broken up into a set of seven shorter tales, making playing it in short bursts not only viable, but one of the best ways to play the game. This is a highly acclaimed game, and has been for years, which has attracted a passionate fan base that it retains to this day.
Papers, Please
Despite the short length of Papers, Please, it has multiple endings that let you play through as many times as you like to see how the story could play out if you make different choices. The game has you taking on the role of an immigration booth attendant, where you’re tasked with checking the paperwork of potential immigrants to decide who can enter the country.
It’s a game packed with moral decisions, like whether you should cop a fine and potentially put your family at risk to help an at-risk immigrant illegally enter the country, and often there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s up to you to decide if you want to stay part of the system and keep food on the table, or help take the oppressive system down.
Inside
Inside has players journeying out into a dark world as seemingly the last person with unique thoughts and feelings in a world overtaken by mindless drones. You’ll make your way through industrialised landscapes, figuring out environmental puzzles as you go.
The first half of this game is eerie and often breathtaking, but its second half takes a deep dive into the weird and wonderful, with twists and turns you wouldn’t guess if you had all the time in the world. Thankfully, the game itself doesn’t take all the time in the world, instead taking players a little under four hours from start to finish.
Donut County
This strange game has you playing as a hole. Yup, a hole. Your job is to swallow up as many objects as you can, expanding in size so you can fit even more things into your infinite void.
The story, as much as there is one, is told through flashbacks, showing the downfall of Donut County as you, the hole that the town literally fell down, gobble up each of the town’s residents. It’s a quirky, fun, and frankly bizarre game with a dash of dark humour, and worth checking out if you feel like having a laugh.
Stray
One of the best games of 2022, Stray has you taking the role of an adorable cat who gets lost in a cyberpunk world filled with robots and weird creatures. As a cat, your movement options are interesting and unique, and unlike anything you might have seen in a traditional platforming game.
It’s a wonderful little game that is absolutely filled with heart and charm, and will be sure to work its way into the hearts of gamers and cat lovers alike.
Undertale
Undertale is a few years old now, but it remains one of the most popular RPGs of all time. Its popularity comes from its willingness to break the mould, as a game where you can choose to take down enemies and get stronger, or take the time to get to know them and befriend them instead.
Undertale is so unlike any other game on the market that it immediately grabbed the attention of the world at large, and its bombastic boss battles and incredible soundtrack quickly cemented it as an all-time great.
If you’re looking for more short experiences, you could also take a look at a hidden feature in one of your subscriptions. We put together a list of the best Netflix games to download and play, all of which are available at no extra cost for Netflix subscribers.
Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.
Donkey Kong champ’s $450k fight to clear name
A famous arcade gamer is suing an Australian content creator after claiming his reputation was damaged in a video uploaded to YouTube.
Donkey Kong champ’s ‘joke’ reputation: court
An American arcade gamer suing for defamation has been accused of having an “untrustworthy” reputation in the gaming community.
YouTuber’s emotional reaction in defo suit
An Australian YouTuber fighting a defamation claim brought against him by an American gamer fought through tears after giving evidence for nearly two days at court.