The best short games to play right now

The best short games know how to respect your time. We've all been there, burnt out after playing yet another huge RPG or one of the other gargantuan new games of the past few months, unable to stomach another skill tree or fast travel system. True, you could try out one of the best short RPGs to play in a weekend, but that's hardly the remedy for roleplaying overload.

Instead, I've done some digging and unearthed the top 15 best short games to play instead, each clocking in at under eight hours. Some of them count among the best free games available on Steam or console. Others feature some of the best game stories of all time. But one thing they all have in common is bitesize video game magic that never overstays its welcome, and will leave you feeling satisfied and buzzed after playing a whole game in a single day. So keep on scrolling to discover my roundup of the best short games to explore right now.

The 15 best short games to play right now are...

15. Dead Take

Starring Neil Newbon and Ben Starr, Dead Take is one of the most unique short horror games I've ever played. Exploring a swanky Hollywood film director's mansion in the aftermath of a massive party, it's up to you to find out what happened to your fellow actor (and maybe learn a bit more about the craft's dark, unspoken underbelly).

Featuring first-person point-and-click mechanics interspersed with live action moments and plenty of detective sleuthing, Dead Take manages to be both incredibly memorable and slow to digest despite its brief runtime... Which is what makes it one of the best short games to play for something truly short, sharp, gripping, and nasty all at once.

14. Paradise Marsh

Paradise Marsh from solo developer LazyEti is a delightful little adventure that sees you set out to catch critters in the landscapes of the wetlands. While you can complete it in a short amount of time if you want to, you're free to go entirely at your own pace and soak up the scenery as you try to collect frogs and bugs. As you'll discover, the stars have fallen out of the sky and spread out across the marsh.

By catching critters, you begin to restore the stars and complete constellations, which take the form of the wildlife that can be found. With plenty to discover, Paradise Marsh is a short game that leaves a lasting impression.

13. Pikuniku

From cheeky, pitch-perfect writing to its smart visual economy of color and shape, Pinuniku is a charming, joyous delight from start to finish. You should absolutely play it – preferably on Switch. Nintendo's handheld console is the perfect fit for the jubilant tone and tactile gameplay that its four-person development team were going for.

Plus, the whole adventure only takes about four hours to see through to the end (perhaps five, depending on how much of a completionist you are), making it undoubtedly one of the best short games ever. That's approximately 240 minutes of unfiltered joy in a box, and you'd be a right Pikuniku to miss it.

Look out for Pikuniku 2, one of the upcoming Switch 2 games we can't wait to see in 2027

12. Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping

If you loved the original, Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is here to amp up the silliness and scandal. As one of the best short games out there, the Duck Detective's latest adventure sees the feathered sleuth encountering his biggest case yet, and you can solve it in well under eight hours (the average is currently three).

It's quackers, it's cute, it's well worth your time, and now that it's available across a range of current and past-gen platforms you really have no excuse not to give it a peck.

Check out some of the other best mystery games if you love puzzling adventures and enigmas to solve.

11. Donut County

Donut County is neither particularly challenging or lively, but eating up every person and thing as the ominous hole is a strangely satisfying experience. Creator Ben Esposito's internet humor-inflected writing driving the story is merely the cherry on top, making this not only one of the best short games, but up there among the funniest to boot.

There's even an underlying metaphor about the damage of gentrification on local culture if you want something to chew on come the end credits but, at its core, Donut County is a small shot of therapeutic catharsis.

Read our Donut County review

10. A Short Hike

In a Short Hike from developer adamgryu, you play as a bird called Claire as you try to make your way to the top of a mountainside in the serene Hawk Peak Provincial Park. Meeting other hikers along the way, you can climb, hike, and even soar through the sky as you explore at your own pace.

There are also chances to do a spot of fishing, and collect hidden treasures. You can make your way to the summit in quite a short time and finish the game, or you can just take things slow and enjoy the peaceful landscapes of this delightful, pixelated world.

9. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

The amount of time you’ll spend playing The Stanley Parable depends on how long you’re willing to go along with its idiosyncratic meta-commentary on the nature the video game medium. Anyone who’s played enough single-player campaigns will find something to laugh at with The Stanley Parable’s fourth-wall-breaking satire. And if you've played before, the Ultra Deluxe packs in yet more surprises to catch you off guard and delight you.

It’s an annoyingly clever game, rapidly firing out the sort of shrewd observations about life, the universe, and everything that you wish you’d had come up with before hearing them. More than that, though, The Stanley Parable is a bona fide hoot, eliciting genuine laughs through each session you play.

Check out our Stanley Parable dev interview to commemorate the Ultra Deluxe release

8. Gone Home 

Gone Home set the standard for modern walking simulators in 2013, with a short but sweet yarn that strikes a deeply personal tone and sticks to that intimacy for the whole two-hour jaunt. It threads a story through the narrative frame of a bright twenty-something returning home after some extended time abroad, exploring her old stomping grounds as she reminisces on her upbringing and figures out what’s happened since she last set foot in the house.

Gone Home’s realistic dialogue makes you feel as though you’ve known every member of the Greenbriar family for a lifetime, which is especially impressive when you realize just how breezily the story whizzes through its neatly segmented chapters.

Read our Gone Home review for more

7. Inside 

What is Inside actually about? Industrialization? Amoral science? A comment on the illusion of agency in video games? You’ll spend more time thinking about Inside than actually playing Inside, which is a testament to its staying power as a persuasive, provocative, and outright perturbing work from Limbo developers Playdead.

As one of the best short games chiming in at around four hours long, Inside jumps between a smorgasbord of gameplay ideas using its 2D platformer format, never content to stick with one for any amount of time that would make it feel too familiar, ensuring an unpredictability that plays well against the story’s paranoid overtones.

Check out our Inside review

6. Superhot 

Superhot is just as hyper-stylized and uber-sexy as The Matrix, but you could play it, enjoy it, and complete it in a shorter amount of time than it would take to watch the first movie in its entirety. That’s an offer you can’t refuse, especially when the high-concept gunplay is this good.

The basic premise for Superhot is that time moves only when you do, but it’s far from a basic game, presenting high-stakes combat challenges that can almost feel more like puzzles than gunfights, even as the action remains as punchy as any other great FPS romp on the market. It’s a two-hour action ballet show where you can feel every blow thrown and bullet fired, resulting in the best micro mind-trip you could hope for.

Read our Superhot review for more details.

5. Limbo 

The Ancient Greeks believed that bad people were doomed to the underworld for eternity, but Limbo has you exploring its damp, decrepit caverns for just a little over three hours. That’s not to say it’s a breezy excursion; this 2D platformer manages to terrify and terrorize the player using nothing more than silhouettes and devious timing, but you’ll be damned if you’re not going to keep pressing on as the plucky, young boy you find yourself in control of.

Limbo is the little platforming masterwork that first put Playdead on the map eight years ago, and even if you’ve heard people singing its praises a million times by now, its snappy pace and forward-thinking design have not lost any of its magic to this day.

Read our five-star Limbo review for more insights.

4. A Way Out

A Way Out is a co-op game like no other. It's on the longer end of the best short games out there, at around six hours to complete, but the extended evening binge is well worth the journey.

Vincent and Leo are a pair of convicts on a high-stakes prison break, and your subsequent escape is essentially made up of a diverse series of mini-games, all of which revolve around tight co-op mechanics. It’s a unique, well-crafted experience with a surprisingly engaging story at its heart. Just make sure the person you’re playing with is one you don’t mind spending six consecutive hours alongside.

Read our A Way Out review next, or check out our list of the best co-op games to play today.

3. What Remains of Edith Finch 

Do you know how it’s often the single-stanza poems that are the most powerful? What Remains of Edith Finch is the video game equivalent of that, roughly three hours in length but presenting an emotional range and depth that’s richer and more affecting than dozens of other, much longer games to have been released in 2017.

Developer Giant Sparrow crafts a series of bite-size vignettes akin to an anthology of short stories, but while each tale differs in gameplay variety, all share a bittersweet fondness for childhood, family, and friendship that tugs at the heartstrings (and the tear ducts) in ways you won’t be expecting. Set aside a cold, rainy evening by the fire for this one; it’s a must-play.

2. Firewatch 

With Firewatch, Campo Santo condenses the events of several months into a 4 hour, lightly interactive adventure set in the Wyoming wilderness, and the results are as good as you’d expect from a story penned by the lead writer of Telltale’s The Walking Dead. The striking depiction of rural America is the backdrop for a meditation on aging and remorse, but there are more uplifting moments in there, too, with some genuinely amusing moments.

But its most touching scenes derive from when these two humans, Henry and Delilah, are at their most vulnerable. Firewatch’s story is a little on the disappointing side, deliberately undercutting its central mystery with something much less exciting than it makes out to be, but you’ll have been glad to embark on this brief getaway to the country either way.

Check out our Firewatch review for more

1. Balatro

Balatro is the unequivocal king of the best short games, though given how unbelievable the simple poker game's meteoric rise was back in 2024, I'm sure it'd happily be crowned the court jester of the bunch instead. Balatro is, for all intents and purposes, a card game roguelike. But it's such a compulsive one that, while you can theoretically "finish" it in under eight hours, I've yet to meet a single person who has managed to keep their playtime that brief.

There's something deviously moreish about Balatro that has taken the world by storm, so what are you waiting for? Pick a card, any card...

Looking for some other games to try out? Check out our list of the best free Switch games, best free Steam games, best free PS5 games, or best free Xbox Series X games you can play right now.