Ever since video games first became popular, there’s been a debate in the community – how long should a game be to justify its price?
Some people fall squarely in the camp of the longer the better, with open-world games likeThe Witcher 3orAssassin’s Creed: Shadows offering 100’s of hours of entertainment.
Others say that if a game is good and well-paced, then it doesn’t matter how long it is, and actually, if your game is just filled with endless checkboxes and padding, then are you really getting value for money?
Is $50 For An 8-Hour Game Good Value? Let’s Work It Out
With Hellblade 2 getting an eyebrow-raising price tag, we look back on other recent high-price, low-playtime games for comparison.
Sometimes, though, you just want to tick a game off of your backlog without much fuss, be it for achievements or simply to get the feeling of ‘completing something’.
If this is you, then see below for a list of games that can be completed in a matter of minutes, if you know what you’re doing, organised from longest to shortest:
Times are taken fromHow Long To BeatandSpeedrun.comunless otherwise mentioned.
Spoiler alert for some alternate endings to Far Cry 4, The Witness, The Stanley Parable and Gone Home
10Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
Enjoy the Mechanics
Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes
The average game in theMetal Gearseries is around 10-20 hours long, with you guiding Solid Snake, Big Boss, Raiden and other characters in a mix of action, adventure, and stealth gameplay. Or in the case ofPlatinum Game’sexcellentRevengeance,a lotof action.
Ground Zeroessees you infiltrating a military/prisoner base in Cuba to try and rescue two targets: a Cipher agent and a former child soldier.
With this primarily being a stealth game, you’ll want to get in and out unnoticed, using all the tools you have at your disposal, from sniper rifles to silenced pistols.
The game is the shortest in the series, with the average playtime being about 2 hours. If you know what you’re doing, however,the game can be completed in just 26 minutes.
To show how much stealth is encouraged, the record for ‘No Kills, Stealth’ on Speedrun.com is only 2 minutes longer than with killing.
Ground Zeroes serves as a prologue toPhantom Pain, which is, ironically, the longest game in the series at just over 45 hours for the main story.
Break the Doom-Scroll
One of the few games on this list that doesn’t require knowing the puzzles or pushing for an Easter Egg ending to complete the game in minutes.
Florenceis simply a short storybook game, taking you through the life of Florence Yeoh as she goes from being mindlessly in a routine with work and doom-scrolling tofalling in love with Krish, who helps her pursue her passion for art.
Inside the game are small minigames like swiping on a dating app or matching up numbers for work, andif done quickly, the entire game can be finished in about 16 minutes.
For an average playthrough where you take in the story, the game will be finished in roughly 30-40 minutes.
8Far Cry 4
A Far Cry From Normal
InFar Cry 4, an FPS-adventure game by Ubisoft, the main story averages 17 ½ hours, with the character embroiled in a civil war in the fictional land of Kyrat after visiting there to scatter his mother’s ashes.
However, there’s an Easter Egg ending in the game, whereby, after being captured bythe charming and magnetic dictator Pagan Min, you are asked to wait and ‘enjoy the Crab Rangoon’.
If you do, and wait approximately 15 minutes in Min’s mansion, then he returns and takes you to the area where your mother asked to have her ashes scattered.
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He then asks if you ‘feel better now’ and would like to ‘finally shoot some goddamn guns’. The credits then roll, and you can feel good about completing a Far Cry game without shooting one person. AFar Cryfrom the main gameplay loop in the series.
7Twelve Minutes
Enough Time to Air Fry an Egg
Twelve Minutes
Twelve Minutesis a time-loop, point-and-click adventure game that follows the characters ‘Husband’, ‘Wife’, and ‘Cop’ played by James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem De Foe respectively.
In the game, you start off playing as the husband returns home from work to his wife’s surprise announcement that she is pregnant. As they celebrate, a police officer knocks on the door and proceeds to arrest the wife and strangle the husband.
The game then loops to the beginning of the evening again, and it’s up to you to take what you’ve learned in each loop to progress further into the mystery.
As the game’s title suggests,the first loop takes 12 minutes to complete, and if you know what you’re doing, then you can complete the entire game in around 14 minutes, as there’s an epilogue that adds a little bit of time.
6Outer Wilds
Wildly Exciting Gameplay
Outer Wilds
Another time-loop game, this time you take control of The Hatchling, a space explorer who has been tasked with exploring the solar system while controlling a device that can translate the ancient ‘Nomai’ text, hopefully helping you to uncover their mysteries.
Unfortunately,after exactly 22 minutes,the sun goes supernova, destroying the solar system and looping you back to the beginning of the game, with only your knowledge of the previous runs and whatever the game deigns important enough to record in your ship’s log permeating between each run.
Now it’s up to you to loop through many runs of the game, using your knowledge of the events that happened prior to the supernova to slowly uncover the mysteries and work out the order of tasks that allow you to save the solar system.
Normally,Outer Wildswould take you about 17 hours. However,if you know the order of tasks, then you can actually complete the game in about 7 ½ minutes.
I’d suggest going in blind for this game though for your first playthrough, and you’ll be treated to one of the most incredible gaming experiences I’ve had, as everything just clicks into place given enough thought.
Not to be confused withThe Outer Worlds, a 13 ½ hour RPG by Obsidian, creators of Fallout: New Vegas – they were both released within 5 months of each other in 2019.
5My Name is Mayo
My name is Platinum Trophy
My Name is Mayo
My Name is Mayo is an achievement-hunters dream. The game consists of clicking a jar of mayo 10,000 times. That’s it.
As you progress, you’ll unlock different costumes ranging from ‘dad moustache’ to a bikini and everything in between, with small jokes and ‘lore drops’ for the mayo jar sprinkled throughout.
The game time fully depends on your click speed, withthe average time being 45 minutes and the quickest taking just 7 mins and 7 seconds.
After completing this task, you may sit back and bask in your 50 new bronze trophies and a gleaming, mayo-covered Platinum Trophy. And if My Name is Mayo has got you craving more shiny metal for your cabinet, check out these10 easy Platinum Trophies.
More Like 7 Minutes
Minitis a game that was almost made for this list specifically. It’s an action-adventure game, where each run takes 60 seconds, as the sword you pick up at the beginning of the game turns out to be cursed!
With each run, you slowly uncover more about the world and what you must do to survive. To help, any item you pick up will be kept between runs, and you’ll respawn in different places depending on where you get to in each run, slowly getting you closer to the endpoint.
Overall, the game should take roughly 1 hr 30 minutes to complete, although again,if you know what you’re doing, the game can be completed in just under 7 minutes.
3The Witness
One of the Shortest Easter Eggs
The Witnessis a puzzle game that can be completed in under 2 minutes, via an Easter Egg ending. In The Witness, the player emerges from an underground bunker into ‘The Island’ and sets off to explore one of thesmallest open worlds in gaming.
While the world is small, it’s packed with over 650 puzzles around the island, some mandatory, most optional. Each puzzle boils down to completing a panel whereby a path needs to be drawn following a set of rules.
There’s very little in the way of tutorials, so the player needs to observe the visual cues of The Island to figure out what to do and where to go.
One of these visual cues is the sun itself, which can be used as a secret start of a panel, very soon after you enter The Island.If you complete the secret panel, a door will unlock, allowing you to progress to the end of the game in under 1 minute and 25 seconds.
The game is built around the player slowly working out the rules of The Island, but if you’d like to see how to complete the game quickly, you can watch the speedrunners of the game show youhow it’s done.
2The Stanley Parable
Stanley, What Are You Doing?
The Stanley Parable
The Stanley Parable, the genre-bending exploration game created by Davey Wreden and William Pugh, has you playing as Stanley the office worker, who one day finds himself with no instructions given to him for the day.
Alongside the omnipresent Narrator, Stanley decides to make choices and explore the world beyond his office room, to see what the world is like outside. There are 19 endings in the original game and 46 endings in the Ultra Deluxe version.
The quickest ending is ‘The Cowards Ending’ whereby Stanley chooses to close the door to the office at the beginning of the game, choosing instead to wait for instructions. This causes the game to reset after a grand total of just over a minute after the player gains control of Stanley.
If you decide to then carry on with the game, and you should, it takes roughly 3 hours to see every ending in the original game and 12 hours for the Ultra Deluxe edition.
William Pugh also created the farcical game Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist, another candidate for this list, which can be completed in around 26 minutes.
1Gone Home
Going, Going, Gone
One of the first ‘walking simulator’ games,Gone Homeinvolves you, surprisingly enough, returning home to your family’s abode. Once there, you find the house deserted and see a note from your sister imploring you to not explore the house.
If you choose to play the game ‘the correct way’, then it takes roughly 2 hours to carefully search through the house and piece together the mystery.
However,you may also complete the entire game in under 1 minute, popping the ‘Homerunner’ achievement for your troubles.
To do this, there is a specific set of actions to complete, with not much room for error. You can seeMaka91Productions videofor a complete guide as to how to do this.
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