11 fantastic games that take less than three hours to beat

While we wait for the blockbuster games of 2025 to release, it’s a good time to catch up on some of the smaller games of recent years that deserve some love. None of these games need a GeForce RTX 5090 to run, which is just as well because stocks of that particular graphics card are hard to find. But perhaps more importantly, these games respect your time while still giving you a compelling reason to enjoy the art and mastery behind these short-run games that will live in your mind for much longer than they take to complete.

11

Mouthwashing

Not for the faint of heart, but this pixelated horror game has a lot to say in its short time

Fair warning: If you don’t like horror games, skip the next entry. Mouthwashing is an absolute belter of the genre, and you won’t be able to look away (but you’ll want to, trust me). You play as the co-pilot of a space-faring cargo freighter in the immediate aftermath of crashing and being stranded in space, with a non-linear narrative that flicks back to just before the crash as well. If you can stick it out through surrealism and your character’s descent into madness, this is one fantastic game as you piece together what happened from fragments of text and dialogue.

Mouthwashing

10

The Stanley Parable

Maybe this one is cheating because getting every ending takes way more than three hours

What if, instead of the game you’re playing imbuing you with plenty of agency to alter events, it spelled everything out for you? If your life was narrated as you move through it, and the choices you make seem not to matter? These are some of the difficult questions you’ll wrestle with as you move through The Stanley Parable, a game that is partly about a game but also about how games are constructed, how and what rules should be, and if you should follow them. Be warned, getting every one of the 19 endings will take you longer than three hours, but a single run won’t, and that gives it plenty of replay value.

The Stanley Parable

9

Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk

What happens if you are the main character’s mental illness, instead of being affected by it?

Psychological horrors often rely on jumpscares, weird noises, and other trickery to make the player feel like they’re going out of their mind. But what if you’re already in that state, tasked with simple fetch quests like you would in a cozy game? Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk explores this possibility, putting you squarely in the driving seat as the mental illness affecting a young girl. Your one task? Help her to go to the store for a bag of milk, and come back safely. It’s a wild ride, made more so by the monochrome pixel art accompanying the visual novel format, and is not to be missed.

Milk Inside A Bag Of Milk Inside A Bag Of Milk

8

That Dragon, Cancer

Get ready to cry because this is a real tearjerker

Video games are an art form, and part of the purpose of art is to challenge us. Not many games challenge you in the way That Dragon, Cancer will, as you experience pivotal moments of a family with a young child with terminal cancer. The sheer emotional difficulty in every scene is depicted in a frank, tender way with every character being faceless, partly to make it easier for you to empathize with the events. The game was designed and written by the father in the game as a way of coming to terms with the four-year battle with cancer his young son had gone through. It’s an unforgettable experience, and a humbling one.

That Dragon, Cancer

7

What Remains of Edith Finch

Not everyone gets to go home again

Part light puzzle game, part walking simulator, part playable novel, What Remains of Edith Finch is a story that only the medium of video games can tell with any justice. As the titular character, you go back to your childhood home as the sole survivor of what seems to be a family curse. Every ancestor had a room in this house, and every room is immaculately preserved as it was in life, with a rich tableau of details that you’ll get caught up in. In any other form, it would be a literary masterpiece, but as an experience, it transcends the bounds of traditional storytelling into something more.

What Remains of Edith Finch

6

Venba

Cook your way through a story about reclaiming identity in a different country

Non-Western cultures are severely underrepresented in games, but occasionally, a gem appears. Venba is a short, thought-provoking game about culture, identity, and what is truly yours when you move away from your roots, told through mini-cooking games. The hook is that you’re cooking from your mother’s recipe book, which is often incomplete, missing instructions, diagrams, or even whole sections. This wouldn’t be an issue back home in India with your mother close by, but with only memory and an incomplete cookbook, the struggle is remembering culture through the food you grew up with.

Venba

5

Sayonara Wild Hearts

Rhythm-based games are often all style but this one has substance too

This ultra-stylish rhythm game will capture your heart, then dash it into pieces with a compelling mix of catchy music and neon-tinged overtones. It’s trippy, the vehicle you’re riding on keeps changing, and it never lets you catch your breath from beat to beat as you zoom through the linear levels, but you won’t care because it is exhilarating and high-octane fun from start to finish.

Sayonara Wild Hearts

4

Journey

Sometimes the destination is only the destination, and what happens first is the important part

Perhaps Journey doesn’t quite have the same impact as when it first came out in 2012, but if you’ve never seen a spoiler for this wonderfully whimsical game, I won’t ruin the surprise. It’s an experience that I won’t ever forget, and maybe neither will you, and the best part is that you don’t have to wait long before it will all be clear. Enjoy the cathartic trip to a distant destination, and always remember, you’re not alone.

Journey

3

Thank Goodness You’re Here!

Ey up duckie, you’re in the right place for some classic British comedy

Humor in games is often dry and doesn’t land properly, but the regional hilarity of Thank Goodness You’re Here never fails to get me in stitches. Maybe it’s the years of living not far from the town that Barnsworth was inspired by, but this game should tickle your funny bone even if you’ve never left the place you grew up in. Sit down, strap in, and enjoy the often bizarre world of a cheeky Northern English town.

Thank Goodness You’re Here!

2

Adios

Is there ever a way out from under the mob?

Many short games tend to be narrative-heavy, because when you strip away platforming, puzzles, and violence, what else is left from a storytelling perspective? Adios plays with conventional themes of fate, agency, and how our decisions end up forcing us into a predestined end, and it’s a wild ride. On one side, the pig farmer who has a long history of supplementing his pigs’ diet with the mob’s enemies. The other is the mob hitman, there to sever ties with you as you grapple with the outcome of your decision to stop disposing of his bodies. The end might be predetermined, but the storytelling leading up to it is well worth your time.

Adios

1

Slay the Princess

Turn the “save the princess” trope on its head and try to remember why you’re in the cabin

This force of storytelling starts with a simple premise—there’s a princess in a cabin, and you’ve been tasked with killing her. As to why, that will be explained as you progress through the visual horror novel format, but rest assured it’s nowhere near as simple as it seems. Enjoy the world-building, and go back for subsequent playthroughs to experience the branching storyline of other choices, but don’t ever forget why you’re in the cabin, to begin with.

Slay the Princess

Not every game needs to be long to be awesome

With many AAA games leaning heavily into live service, multiplayer modes, or map treasure gathering, it’s refreshing to find that not every game disrespects your time. Sometimes, you just want a quick gaming fix, and every game on this list will fit that bill, while taking fewer than three hours to finish. Plus, they’re mostly lightweight on system resources, so you can happily use them on your PC gaming handheld while you’ve got a bit of time spare.

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