A good game doesn’t have to be huge: we prove it with examples
Duration is often considered to be almost the main metric by which the quality of the game is assessed. The longer the better. On the one hand, you can understand people who have paid money and want the investment to be as effective as possible. On the other hand, a long game is not necessarily good … and vice versa. In the end, sometimes there is simply no free time that could be devoted to completing an epic for a hundred hours. For those who find themselves in such a situation or are just looking for a good, but not long game, we have prepared this collection.
This publication is supported by the OMEN 15-ek0039ur Gaming Laptop . This is a new model that HP engineers have used the very best in design. OMEN 15 (2020) features an Intel Core i7-10750H processor, GeForce RTX 2070 ray-traced graphics, 16GB of RAM and a 15.6-inch 144Hz display. And all this – in a compact body just over 2 centimeters thick and weighing 2.5 kilograms.
OMEN 15 (2020) has already visited our edition. This is an excellent laptop for gaming and work, which stands out for its cooling system. It is quiet – even the “heavy” 3D-actions can be played without headphones, without fear that the noise of the fans will block the speakers. At the same time, the cooling is very effective: the case temperature remains comfortable at all points, and the processor and video card in OMEN 15 (2020) do not drop frequencies, so in some tasks the performance of the laptop almost reaches the level of more expensive RTX 2080 video chips – this is enough for OMEN 15 (2020) ran any modern game at maximum settings.
With a price of 120 thousand rubles, OMEN 15 (2020) is an almost perfectly balanced laptop. The screen has great colors (including black) and the 144Hz refresh rate makes games as smooth as possible. The design is austere, so you can take the laptop to the office, and if you want to stand out and show your gaming character, then just turn on the keyboard backlight and customize it as you like. Finally, the OMEN 15 (2020) sound was tuned by Bang & Olufsen, making it great for listening to music, watching movies and of course playing games. Read the detailed story at this link .
A short hike
A wonderful game, the essence of which is almost fully revealed in the title. The main character is a young anthropomorphic bird who, together with her mother, comes to a camp site lost in the forest. Summer boredom is all around, and even the mobile network does not reach this Tmutarakan, and, as luck would have it, you need to make an important call. The only place where you can somehow catch a signal is the top of the mountain, at the foot of which you are located. This is how the title short walk begins, during which you will have to go through unexpectedly many completely safe, but still exciting adventures and meet a bunch of very interesting characters.
Journey
While not a novelty, Journey can be used as a benchmark when it comes to short games. This is a small and very beautiful adventure in an unusual world covered with endless sands, where very peculiar creatures live, which outwardly resemble intelligent rugs, and in their habits – various sea animals. The main character literally falls from heaven to earth and tries to get to a high mountain on the horizon, which, for some reason, terribly beckons him. And on the way, he interacts with the local inhabitants, solves simple puzzles and learns a little about the history of this world (although do not rely on a clear articulation of the plot – the developers prefer allegory). It is worth completing Journey at least for the last level – incredibly beautiful and emotional.
Rime
An extremely beautiful adventure with unusual puzzles. Actually, it is best to stop at this, so as not to spoil the pleasure of those who have not yet played Rime. It is worth adding only that the game is also trying to talk to the player on a rather serious topic, but this becomes obvious only in the final and it turns out, frankly, not very much. But this does not spoil the pleasure at all.
Guacamelee
Metroidvania in a rather unexpected setting. The main character Guacamelee is a resident of a Mexican village, leading a modest life and quietly in love with the daughter of the local mayor. But one day everything changes: the village is attacked by otherworldly forces, the hero is killed, and a little later he is resurrected in the form of an invincible luchador and goes in search of offenders – to take revenge on them and save his beloved.
Guacamelee is an extremely colorful and fun game with a very good sense of humor and charming characters. It is also one of the most laconic metroidvanias in our memory. Which, to be honest, only adds points to her.
Little nightmares
A horror platformer about a little girl trying to get out of mysterious dungeons, where she is constantly pursued and trying to be devoured by nightmarish giants. A very stylish game with a perfectly calculated duration – just enough so that it would not be offensive for the money spent, but not too long so that you would not suddenly get bored. By the way, the sequel will be released on February 11, so now is the time to get acquainted with the original or refresh your memory if you have already seen the game.
Abzu
The game, as if specially created for those who were not satisfied with Journey. They really have a lot in common: a silent hero (or is it a heroine?), Whose origin is shrouded in mystery; a mysterious world that has fallen into decay and rolled back into a natural – wild – state, but full of ruins hinting at its former greatness; finally, a somewhat similar visual style and an atmosphere of light sadness. And in the gameplay, the similarities are noticeable. Here we also explore the world, solve simple puzzles and avoid encounters with mysterious monsters that were clearly generated by the previous inhabitants of these places. Only if in Journey the rest of the characters only resembled sea inhabitants, then here everything really happens at the bottom of the sea, and you are surrounded by fish, dolphins and whales.
To the moon
A great interactive story that continues to be one of the best in the genre. To the Moon is a sci-fi drama about employees of a company that offers customers the opportunity to live their whole life anew and change anything about it. Or, more precisely, about one specific order that they have to fulfill. You can ignore the frivolous visual style, because To the Moon is actually a very touching and superbly written game that you cannot tear yourself away from.
Transistor
Thanks to the resounding success of Hades, the Supergiant Games studio is now known to many, but not everyone may remember that her previous projects were no worse. Take Transistor, a sci-fi action RPG with a touch of cyberpunk, whose main character travels through a futuristic city in the company of a talking sword. It has everything a good game needs: stunning visual style, amazing music, cute characters, and dynamic gameplay. And all this is packaged very compactly, so the Transistor will not have time to bore you either.
Layers of Fear
A very compact and unexpectedly unobtrusive horror about creativity and madness. Most of all it resembles a trip through a horror tunnel in some old amusement park. From the darkness, someone howls terribly, a coffin standing by the wall suddenly swings open, and a plastic corpse falls out onto the visitors sitting in the trolley. No one was really scared, but everyone was quite happy. Hardcore horror fans will be bored, but everyone else is highly advised to buy at some sale and try.
Stories Untold
Another horror, but more unusual. Stories Untold is an interactive anthology of several very different stories. You find yourself in an abandoned house, where something very bad clearly happened, then in a laboratory conducting experiments on an alien artifact, then at a polar station lost somewhere in the snow. All of these gameplay vignettes are built around interacting with a variety of techniques. For example, with an old computer on which you play an old-fashioned text quest that suddenly merges with reality. Or with a radio station, with which you need to catch and transcribe mysterious broadcasts. This process is simple but very interesting. And the developers did an excellent job on the atmosphere, and the way they managed to bring together such dissimilar plots in the final is also worthy of respect.
Yoku’s Island Express
Unusual metroidvania with pinball elements. The protagonist of Yoku’s Island Express is a cute little bug who got a job as a postman on a remote tropical island. The work, it seems, is not particularly dangerous, but very soon it turns out that you have to save the entire island from a mysterious ancient misfortune.
An important role in Yoku’s Island Express is played by a ball that the hero rolls around in front of him. Instead of traditional jumping on platforms, the developers offer you small pinball exercises, where you yourself act as a projectile. It sounds strange, but it is impossible to tear yourself away.
The red strings club
Cyberpunk adventure, the protagonist of which is a bartender who can mix drinks that directly affect human emotions. The game has a very cool atmosphere, characters and music, but special mention should be made of the interesting way in which the developers introduced an element of nonlinearity that was extremely unobvious at first into an absolutely linear game. To understand what exactly this is about, you have to go to The Red Strings Club to the end, because otherwise we will have to hit the spoilers.
A way out
A cinematic co-op adventure about two very different prisoners who decide to escape from prison to reach a common enemy. The ability to play alone in A Way Out is not provided in principle, but there are many really very cool cooperative episodes here that simply would not work if you did not have a partner or a partner. Separately, it is worth noting the great ending, which literally turns the game inside out and makes you look at it from a new angle.
Battletoads
Continuation of the once very popular series of action games about anthropomorphic toads fighting space evil. The new part – not only quite competently made beat’em up, but also a very good comedy cartoon. The animated cutscenes between the levels are shot very well, and sometimes you really laugh at them out loud. However, the level with flying motorcycles (yes, there is one here too) is only a little less nasty. But it’s worth overcoming.
Donut County
In a good way, a frivolous game, partly inspired by Katamari Damacy. Only here you control not a ball to which everything sticks, but a hole in the ground into which everything falls. The more objects your hole swallows, the wider it will become and the larger objects it can swallow. The goal is to feed the insatiable pit to the dump and clear every level of all unnecessary.
Carto
A charming and unusual adventure in which you need to help the heroine find her family by swapping the pieces of the map on which the action takes place and literally changing the world around. Perfect for those who want something unobtrusive and not too aggressive. And also to everyone who just loves unusual games.
LIMBO
This game has already become a real indie classic, but we will never get tired of recommending it to everyone. LIMBO is a very atmospheric platformer about a nameless boy who wakes up in an eerie black and white forest full of deadly dangers. Everything is beautiful here – from the visual style to puzzles, and once you start playing, it is already impossible to stop.
Inside
Playdead’s second game, which developed LIMBO, bears many similarities to their debut project. Equally gloomy visual style, the main character is again a boy with no name, trying to get out of a terrible place, where he got to no one knows how. But approximately the same ideas are implemented here on a fundamentally different level. As a result, Inside feels like a completely independent (and incredibly high quality) game. You can play it and LIMBO in any order – you won’t regret it, one way or another.
Carrion
Another metroidvania, only now it’s not a cute story about a friendly bug or a brave Luchador, but an inverted horror. That is, a game about an unknown monster, where the role of the monster is assigned to you. Imagine a game inspired by the movie Thing, where you play as an alien monster. In Carrion, you have to quickly crawl through the ventilation shafts at some underground research base, gradually acquire more and more creepy abilities and eat people stuck with you underground in order to gain mass and become larger and larger. It turned out great – we recommend it from the bottom of our hearts.
Titanfall 2
The highest budget game in our selection. Although the main feature of Titanfall 2 is great multiplayer, the storyline campaign is also very decent here. There was a place in it for giant humanoid robots, for space warfare, and even for time travel. All in all, a wonderful sf-attraction, which is not a pity to spend a few hours on a weekend.
In fact, there are incomparably more magnificent short games – there are so many that we will never have time to tell about all of them purely physically. But we hope that our selection will be useful to you more than once when you want to play something of high quality, but that does not require you to devote yourself the rest of your life.
