9 great games that are less than an hour long
Not all games need to be epic. Sure, we love a long game we can properly sink some time into, but we also love a short game that can be done and dusted in one sitting. The games on this list are all under one hour long, offering up a full, complete experience in less time than it takes to watch a movie. Better yet, they’re all thoroughly enjoyable, too!
Our picks of games less than an hour long cover a wide range of genres. Some of these offer up horror experiences designed to make you jump, while others are cosy, narrative-driven adventures, telling a short but sweet story. There’s also a full-motion video experience and an anomaly-hunting game – one of the best types of games to play if you’re looking for something short but sweet.
So: if you’ve got an hour to kill and you’re at a loss at what to do, consider picking up one of the games on the list below. All entertaining in their own right, you won’t regret playing any of them.
1. Frog Detective: The Haunted Island
We’re cheating a little bit here, because if you opt to play The Frog Detective on console, you’ll be buying “The Entire Mystery”, which is three games in one. Only on PC can you buy each chapter as a standalone game. While The Entire Mystery will take over two hours to complete (it’s still short!), the first part will take roughly 30 minutes to complete.
And what a wonderful 30 minutes it is. This simple little mystery game casts you as the titular frog. Thrown onto a so-called ‘Haunted Island’, something is afoot, and it’s up to you to find out what. You’ll need to talk to a kooky cast of characters to figure out the mystery, and you’ll have a jolly good time while doing so. We challenge you to play this one without a grin on your face.
Read our review of The Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery
2. Welcome to Kowloon
Do you like horror games? If so, Welcome to Kowloon is for you. This unsettling adventure tells of the perils of moving house, with the ‘new’ apartment you find yourself in being anything but idyllic.
Arriving at a run-down room in a dangerous area, it soon turns out that the local crime rate is the least of your problems. A note in your room reveals that your landlady has a secret – and as you explore the apartment, things only go from bad to worse. Prepare to jump out of your skin as you make your way around this short but effective horror game that will have you on edge from start to finish.
Read more about Welcome to Kowloon
3. Catto’s Post Office
From a horror game, to something that couldn’t be further from it. Catto’s Post Office is a gorgeous, cosy adventure that puts you in control of Catto, a post worker cat who has some packages to deliver. Catto’s day at work is pretty short: you’ll only have a few packages to deliver around your small, picturesque town before you can call it a day. But there’s a problem: it’s Catto’s birthday, and nobody seems to have remembered.
Catto’s Post Office has you completing some delivery work, but it also deals with Catto’s emotions, coming to terms with the fact that it’s their birthday and nobody has wished them well. Don’t worry, though: the ending is seriously heart-warming and will leave you feeling all warm and squishy inside.
Read our review of Catto’s Post Office
4. Lern Island Letters
Here’s a different type of post office-based job. Lern Island Letters, which takes around fifteen minutes to complete, sees you arrive on the titular Lern Island as a temporary postman. This remote island only has five residents, and it’s your job to sort through their mail to ensure the right letters get to the right person.
While you can’t go reading every letter – that would be rude (and illegal!) – you will pick up clues about each resident based on what you can see. Flyers will tell you bits of information about the island and the people on it, while certain envelopes will give you key bits of information about who’s who. It’s a wonderful, cosy experience that somehow manages to pack in a great narrative. The only problem is that it will leave you wanting more.
Read more about Lern Island Letters
5. Captured
We absolutely love an anomaly-hunting game, and Captured is one of the best there is. You need to be a little bit brave to play it, however, as it’s not averse to making you jump and throwing creepy imagery at you. But providing you don’t mind a bit of horror, you’re going to have a great time.
Captured places you in a seemingly ordinary house – but it doesn’t stay ordinary for long. As you walk through it, looping through the house multiple times, you’ll be on the lookout for strange things that shouldn’t be there. Maybe it’s a monster, or maybe a toilet has appeared where there wasn’t one before. You’ll need to spot the anomalies, and if you get it right on several loops in a row, you’ll get out scot-free. If you miss something however? You’ll need to start from the beginning again.
6. Florence
Florence started life as a mobile game before making its way to Switch and PC, and even though this game can be finished in roughly 45 minutes, it’s one that will stay with us forever. This narrative adventure follows young adult Florence, who feels stuck in a rut in her life. It’s a feeling that all of us can empathise with; a never-ending loop of work, chores, sleeping, and not enough time having fun.
Although it’s short, Florence is powerful and poignant, focusing on human emotions, relatable experiences and simply what it means to be alive. Brought to life with beautiful art, it’s a game that’s absolutely worth your time. It’s six years since we played it for the first time, but we still think about it often.
7. The Green Light
Here’s another short but effective horror game. The Green Light follows protagonist Fred. Starting with a very bad day at work, he ends up following a mysterious voice on a radio telling him to seek out the green light – a beacon coming from a nearby lighthouse.
It’s not a smooth journey, though. Seeing some ghostly apparitions along the way is the least of Frank’s worries, and making his way to the lighthouse might just be more trouble than it’s worth. And will his problems be solved when he gets there? Well, you’ll have to play it to find out, but this short narrative might just leave you scratching your head as you try to piece it all together.
Read more about The Green Light
8. The Day I Became a Bird
As a kid, you’d have done anything to impress the person you liked, right? That’s essentially the premise of The Day I Became a Bird. You’ll take on the role of Frank, a young boy enamoured with a particular girl in his class. She’s obsessed with birds, and so Frank does the only thing he can think of: become a bird.
Taking place over the course of a few days, you’ll follow Frank as he gathers materials to build a bird costume, as well as solving short, simple puzzles. It’ll take roughly an hour to complete, and so its story isn’t going to set your world on fire, but it will warm your heart. It helps that it’s so beautifully animated, sporting a hand-drawn style that suits the subject of the game so perfectly.
Read our review of The Day I Became a Bird
9. Hello Stranger
If you’re looking for a short game, an FMV (or ‘full-motion video’ game) is a great choice. One of the shortest is Hello Stranger, a game set in a near future where protagonist Cam lives in a house completely controlled by his AI home assistant. Meeting someone online on a Chat Roulette-type service, things take a very dark turn where he’s forced to play a game or else face deadly consequences.
One playthrough of Hello Stranger will roughly take about 45 minutes, giving you a full, complete narrative. But with choices to make along the way and multiple endings to uncover, it’s worth playing through multiple times. The acting is on-point and the story Hello Stranger tells is seriously intriguing, so if you enjoy a thriller, make sure this is in your library.
