Portal?
Patient Gamers
A gaming community free from the hype and oversaturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game. Whether it's price, waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released, don't meet the system requirements, or just haven't had the time to keep up with the latest releases.
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Awesome game, it was one of the first I ever played on my friends' Xbox
You've probably played it then but Portal 2 is pretty short too.
Outer wilds. It can be longer for some but finishing it in a single sitting or two it hits best. A deep emotional experience that you can only ever truly experience truly the first time. So avoid spoilers at all costs.
Also Firewatch
Was gonna say Outer Wilds as well. It's such an amazing experience and kind of made me rethink what video games can be as art and just... an experience. Can be finished really quick though for me it took a good chunk of time.
I'll also reiterate, don't look up spoilers. The game is so much about exploration and discovery that going in blind is best.
It truly is something special. Every time it’s on sale I end up buying a key and giving it to somebody I know just so they can experience it.
Sometimes I feel a bit silly with how much and how often I recommend this game, but it truly is something special.
I got the soundtrack on vinyl just recently and listening to it is like microdosing the game.
A Short Hike is a great little platformer you can finish in a couple hours.
Super Mario RPG is a classic and can be squeezed into 10 hours if you rush, but probably closer to 12~15.
I second „A Short Hike,“ it‘s a wonderful little game.
Mirror's Edge - a perfect way to spend 5 hours
This has been on my list for a decade haha. I just might have to pick it up
It's a comfort game for me, always come back to it every year or two.
Same. Single run, hard mode, no red highlights A well spent afternoon
Journey is a game that has stuck with me for the past ten years. It took me an hour and a half to complete.
Ordered-ish by recommendation:
- SUPERHOT (it's the most innovative shooter I've played in years)
- Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
- Sayonara Wild Hearts
- Carrion
- Planet of Lana
- Jusant
- The Artful Escape
- The Gunk
I always check https://howlongtobeat.com/ before starting a new game
I also tend to prefer games that are short.
Here are a couple of my PC recommandations, in no specific order :
Somerville
Jusant
Planet of Lana
Limbo + Inside
Little Nightmares 1 + 2
Cocoon
Solar Ash
Tunic
Cult If The Lamb
Have A Nice Death
Death's Door
Stray
Trek To Yomi
Tunic, ten hours?! I must be terrible at it hahaha
Fuck sake it took me nearly ten hours just to learn how to read in Tunic
The Stanley Parable
I also love short-ish games, so hopefully one of these strikes your fancy. You didn't specify a preferred genre or other games you liked, so I'm going to just throw some out there:
Adventure/Puzzle
- Stacking - fun adventure puzzle game based on matryoshka dolls
- Little Nightmares - fantastic puzzle game stuff great atmosphere and horror elements; similar to INSIDE and Limbo
- Abzû - underwater exploration with light puzzle mechanics
- Ys 1 and 2 - pretty old, but it's my favorite Ys game; Ys Origin is a bit newer, but also a bit longer (~11 hours per playthrough, need 3 for full story, but each plays differently)
Puzzle
- Manifold Garden - puzzle game where you manipulate gravity
- Hexlogic - sudoku-like
- SUPERHOT - shooter that plays like a puzzle game
- Magrunner - just ignore the story, the puzzles are pretty good
- Portal - the OG puzzle game, must play if you haven't; second is about twice as long
ARPG/Souls-like
- Death's Door - just started, but it's looking good
- Ittle Dew - Zelda-like with lots of satire about the genre
- Furi - boss rush only
- Titan Souls - boss rush, but both you and the boss has 1HP
Narrative heavy
- Telltale Batman or The Walking Dead - narrative heavy game with walking simulator sections; choices matter (but not a ton); great if you want a decent interactive story
- What Remains of Edith Finch - explore your old home to learn everyone's secrets
- Oxenfree - explore Island to uncover its secrets; replay value for alternate endings
Metroidvania
- Headlander - Metroidvania where you play as a disembodied head that can attach to other bodies
- Ori and the Blind Forest
Point and Click
- Darkside Detective - point and click with a great sense of humor
- Broken Age - you're a virgin about to be sacrificed, and you're not sold on the idea
- Deponia - earth is completely wrecked, and you want off; quite funny
AAA/high production value
- Ryse: Son of Rome - not amazing, but a pretty satisfyingly average experience
- Call of Juarez: Gunslinger - shooter a bit after the US civil war
I have more, just let me know what you like and I can try to give more recs.
What Remains of Edith Finch - explore your old home to learn everyone’s secrets
I love that game.
Well-reviewed games you can 100% in less than 10hrs:
- Portal
- The Henry Stickmin Collection
- OneShot
- Stray
- Grimm's Hollow
- Any of The Room games
- Pineapple on Pizza
- There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension
- Doki Doki Literature Club
- TOEM
- Finding Paradise
- The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog
- CULTIC
- Gorogoa
- The Case of the Golden Idol
Well-reviewed games you can probably beat in around 10hrs, but not quite 100%:
- Portal 2
- Vampire Survivors
- Pizza Tower
- Katana ZERO
- A Hat in Time
- Resident Evil 2
- Hotline Miami
- The Wolf Among Us
- Undertale
- Papers, Please
- Baba Is You
- DUSK
- POSTAL 2
- Outlast
Edit: formatting is pain
Edit 2: I missed the part about low-end hardware, but it sounds like the only ones of these you may not be able to run are Stray and Resident Evil 2
In no particular order:
Metal Gear Rising Revengence
Psychonauts 1
Bladed Fury
Ori and the Blind Forest
Titanfall 2
OneShot
Undertale
Unpacking
Portal/Portal 2
Bastion/Transistor
Any member of the Shadowrun RPG trilogy
Little Inferno
Planetarian
Antichamber - old revolutionary puzzle game, confusing at times
Baba is you - a great puzzle game
Outer wilds - experience that is one in a lifetime, go in blind
Return of obra dinn - you are a detective
If it hasn't been mentioned, I think it's newer than 5 years but Return of the Obra Dinn and Curse of the Golden Idol are great short games that you can pick up and put down as you like.
Games of about 10hs from before 2019?
- King of Dragon Pass: Tribe management game/text adventure with illustrations. Felt it was interesting in both mechanics and vibes
- Plants vs Zombies: Addictive comedy-themed tower defense
- Alundra: PS1's Zelda
- Gris: Atmospheric 2D puzzle platformer
- Celeste: Rewarding 2D platformer with nice music
- The Lion's Song: Graphic aventure light on gameplay and heavy on story and atmosphere. 4 chapters about early 20th century Austrian artists and scientists with themes like art, gender, identity, memory, society, etc.
- Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You: You play as a government employee tasked with finding people deemed as terrorists by the gov by scouring their social networks. There's different ways to play it
- Papers, Please: Similar to above but as a border control agent
- The Banner Saga: Tactical RPG bases on viking mythology
- Rebuild: Gangs of Deadville: Management of a group/colony of customizable survivors in a zombie apocalypse. Web game
These are more recent but they should require very low specs:
- Roadwarden: Very well written and immersive text adventure with RPG elements. Low fantasy world, you're assigned as a roadwarden by a far away nation to a dangerous and sparsely populated wildland.
- Landnama: Viking tribes settling Iceland. Plays like a well designed board game in video game form. Real time with pause.
- Citizen Sleeper: Incredible cyberpunk text-heavy adventure with RPG elements and a narrative focused on being humane in a not so humane world with a not quite humane body
Portal 2
You absolutely must play Doki Doki Literature Club if you have not. It's free. Do not look up spoilers or be put off by the type of game or the setting. Just play it.
P.S. - "Doki Doki" the way you write the sound of a heart beating in Japanese akin to "lub dub" in English.
Return of the Obra Dinn. The 2nd game from the maker of Papers, Please. You're trying to solve the murders or disappearances of 60 people on a ship, using a watch that can view their moment of death. Insanely unique game, and it's hard to replicate that feeling of all the pieces of the puzzle falling into place that this game fosters.
I have seen it recommended somewhere in the comments but I want to shed some more light on this game: What Remains of Edith Finch. It is a walking simulator that should take about 2 hours and is best played in a single session.
As Edith Finch, you go back to the house where you grew up in your younger years to explore it. The Finch family has an almost genetic trait of bad luck; many of them have died before their time. You explore the house room by room and explore that person's last moments.
There is no gore or horror of any kind, but there are children that die, so if that is a trigger I would sit this one out. If not, it is currently on sale for less than €5. It is worth it.
Stray
I think Bastion is a perfect fit for this
Celeste. Not much to say except that it's a fantastic little platformer.
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Eliza: A visual novel by Zachtronics, took me 10 hours to beat
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Aviary Attorney: A visual novel / detective/ attorney game with music from Camille Saint-Saens and art by J.J. Grandville. Beat it in 7 hours and had a blast.
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Braid: 2D puzzle platformer with time shift mechanic. Finished it in 7 hours.
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Tiny Bang story: wimmelpicture point & click. 7 hours.
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Call of Cthulhu: Horror walking simulator. 7 hours.
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Bastion: Amazing isometric action game by Supergiant Games. Rook me good 6 hours to finish.
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Thomas was alone: 2 D platformer with geometric shapes as characters and great narrator. 6 hours.
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Whispers of a machine: Noir detective story point & click. 5 hours.
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Homefront: USA gets invaded by Korea first person shooter. Good 4 hours.
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INSIDE: Atmospheric 2D puzzler. 4 hours.
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LIMBO: Same as INSIDE, same developer, great game, different story. 4 hours.
Stray
- Firewatch (highly recommend!)
- SUPERHOT
- The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe (highly recommend!)
- Frog Fractions (game is best played blind)
- SCP: Containment Breach
Incremental Games: (best played blind)
- Skynet Simulator (highly recommend!)
- A Dark Room
- Crank
- Candy Box!
Limbo. Good game and it lasts only 2 hours.
Chrono Trigger apparently. It feels longer, but if you are familiar with square rpgs… or Pokemon. You can get through it quickly.
I take my time personally, and like doing the side activities, and listening to the music.
Celeste!
(Unless you want to complete additional levels, which are still canon, then much much more).
It's been awhile since I finished if, but if I recall correctly,Abzu
was about 5 hours.
I keep a spreadsheet literally called "games to play". Ive played about half of these so far, but they all meet your criteria, and all have overall good reviews, here's a selection from it, including my own notes: (pardon the lack of formatting coming from a spreadsheet)
A Hand With Many Fingers - 3 hours - Puzzle - Difficult (use pen and paper for clues) CIA mystery
A Wolf In Autumn - 1 hour - Walking Sim - Girls nightmare
ADR1FT - 6 hours - Puzzle - Space station catastrophe
Anna - Extended Edition - 5 hours - Adventure - Psych horror in sawmill, inventory based puz
Antichamber - 7 hours - Puzzle - MC-Escher-esque open world physics breaking puzzle solving
Aporia: Beyond The Valley - 5 hours - Walking Sim - Walking Sim+ (puzzles), awaken in ancient temple in jungle
Ballads At Midnight - 4 hours - Visual Novel - Story of a bard and a vampire
Beyond: Two Souls - 12 hours - Adventure - Ellen Page / Willem Dafoe,
Blind Spot - 5 hours - Puzzle - Puzzle mystery story
Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons - 3 hours - Walking Sim - Heart-wrenching story told with no words
Brukel - 1 hour - Walking Sim - 92yr old grandma retells memories of WWII
Close To The Sun - 6 hours - Walking Sim - Looks like Bioshock, great atmo
Cloud Climber - 1 hour - Walking Sim
Deliver Us The Moon - 5 hours - Adventure - Sci-fi story on moon, some puzzles, some platforming
Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald A Whirlwind Heist - 1 hour - Walking Sim - Very short, hilarious game from maker of The Stanley Principle
Draugen - 3 hours - Mystery - American searching for missing sister in 1920s Norway
Goetia - 7 hours - Point-And-Click - Puzzles / adventure in abandoned house, text heavy
Gorogoa - 2 hours - Puzzle - Hand Illustrated puzzle game
Heavy Rain - 10 hours - RPG - Crime thriller / mystery, multiple outcomes, some QTEs
I Hope She's OK - 1 hour - Walking Sim - Short mystery at a nordic cabin, told through instagram-like messages
Jessika - 3 hours - FMV - Solve suicide of Jessika
Journey - 5 hours - Walking Sim - Atmospheric exploration
Knee Deep - 4 hours - Puzzle - Mystery in a swampland / theater production
Kona - 8 hours - Adventure - Detective in eerie Canada town
Manifold Garden - 6 hours - Puzzle - M.C. escher landscape build gravity bend puzzles
Murdered: Sould Suspect - 10 hours - RPG - Solve your own murder
Scanner Sombre - 3 hours - Walking Sim - Trippy cave-explore game
SOMA - 10 hours - RPG - Horror adventure
Tacoma - 4 hours - Walking Sim - Sci-fi space station adventure
The Fidelio Incident - 3 hours - Puzzle - Short story, plane crash in N. Ireland
The Forgotten City - 10 hours - RPG - Time loop in ancient Rome
The House of Da Vinci - 7 hours - Puzzle - Similar to "The Room" series
The Painscreek Killings - 10 hours - Walking Sim + - Murder mystery, find clues and keys
The Secrets of Darkwood - 5 hours - Txt RPG - Descendant of Might and Magic series
The Signifier - 9 hours - Adventure - Dark, tech-noir
The Silent Age - 4 hours - Point-and-click - Short, fairly easy puzzles, time travel post-apocalypse
The Turing Test - 6 hours - Puzzle - Portal/Talos wannabe
The Unfinished Swan - 4 hours - Puzzle - Paint / blob game
To The Moon 4 hours - Walking Sim - Doctors help dying patients relive life
Untitled Goose Game - 6 hours - TP-RPG - You are a horrible goose
Valley - 8 hours - Walking Sim - Actually running/jumping sim
Of these, the standouts that I've played so far are "Scanner Sombre" and "Unfinished Swan" for truly unique gameplay. "SOMA" and "Heavy Rain" for best storytelling. "Painscreek Killings" for best mystery (minus one very out of place sequence). "Forgotten City" for the best standalone Skyrim mod turned into a self contained adventure.
Bulletstorm, its stupid, its raunchy, and its hilarious, and it clocks in at about 8 hours.
Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice
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Citizen Sleeper, it's so good you will likely not put it down until your story ends!
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Thomas Was Alone, amazing narrative platformer and all time favourite.
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Telltale Games, most of not all can be completed in 10 hours and they are all great. TWAU is the best one.
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Titanfall 2, one of the greatest campaigns.
You can finish a lot in 10 hours.
Dredge
Had no idea what to expect going into it. Had only heard that it was a cosmic horror fishing game and decided to give it a try. Ended up loving it!
Not a huge game in terms of scope but feels it nailed every mechanic and the art style and delivery is top notch