Short adventure games worth actually finishing

There's a quiet joy in a game you can finish over a weekend. Short adventures get a bad rap for being lightweight, but a tight five-hour story often lands harder than a bloated open world.

Hollow Tide is my go-to example lately. It doesn't waste your time with filler; every room you explore adds to the picture, and it ends before it overstays its welcome. I thought about it for days afterward.

The trick with these games is to slow down. They reward looking closely at a mural or reading a scattered note, so rushing through defeats the point. Put your headphones on and let it breathe.

If your backlog is a graveyard of half-finished epics, a short adventure is a great palate cleanser. Sometimes the best thing a game can do is respect when to stop.