As nice as it is to get a lot of bang for your buck with new game purchases, the fact of the matter is that not everyone has time to devote to the latestAAAsuper-duper gigantic open world release.
Sometimes you just want a nice,lean experience that you can finish over the course of a few days. Of course, I don’t mind admitting I’m a little spoiled by the creature comforts of big-box games, something that retro or indie releases can’t always satisfy.
If you’re looking for leaner experiences that still have a decent amount of polish, the AA sector is a good place to check. Not only are these games cheaper on average, but they still give you a fair bit of flash to enjoy in the span of a week or so.
Some of these games even manage to be emotionally affecting despite their relatively shorter runtimes. If you want a AA game on the shorter side, give one of these a try.
The following games have average main story clear times of 12 hours or less based on stats fromHowLongToBeat.
7South Of Midnight
Average Clear Time: 9.5 Hours
South of Midnight
I didn’t have a particularly large attention span when I was a kid. Honestly, I still don’t now, though perhaps that’s part of what helps shorter single-player games appeal to me. Anyway, I wasn’t always into lengthy fantasy stories growing up, but I think if I played it as a kid, I would’ve been able to appreciateSouth of Midnight’s lean 9.5 hour runtime.
South of Midnight is a largely linear action game with some platforming elements, keeping you mostly on task and cordoning off arenas when you get into fights withthe personified sorrows of the citizenry of the Deep South.
There may occasionally be hidden nooks or branching paths that yield extra collectibles when explored, but these little dalliances add relatively little to your overall playtime.
South of Midnight is focused more on its moment-to-moment gameplay and presentation than the minutiae of its systems. We’re not doing much in the way of gear or stats here; once you understand the combat and movement mechanics, you should breeze through the majority of the campaign in a pleasant fashion.
6Shadows Of The Damned
Average Clear Time: 7 Hours
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered
Most of the games made by Goichi Suda, better known as Suda51, tend to run on the lighter side. It’s probably for the best; as much as I admire the guy, I don’t think my mind would survive an extended period in Suda’s world. For a snacky Suda51 experience, tryShadows of the Damned.
This third-person shooter is a collaborative effort between Suda51 andlegendary game designer and director, Shinji Mikami, originally released in 2011 and remastered in 2024.
It is a game that is equal parts hot-blooded rock n’ roll and ridiculous nonsense, starring demon hunter Garcia Hotspur and his gun-transforming sidekick Johnson as they raid Hell to reclaim the soul of Garcia’s lover.
It’s a fast-paced shooter, clocking in at around 7 hours, which is actually slightly faster than the original release based on average stats. Maybe the rebalanced difficulty helped to smooth out some of the original version’s rougher edges. Goodness knows, there are a couple of sequences that went on a little too long when I first played it back in the day.
5Journey To The Savage Planet
Journey to the Savage Planet
If a game’s core loop revolves around ability upgrades and material harvesting, odds are good you’re going to be engaged with it for a good while. Certainly, nobody has ever said playing something like Metroid is a quick experience, unless you’re speedrunning. In spite of that,Journey to the Savage Planetmanages to defy expectations by incorporating all of those elements while only clocking in at around 7 hours.
Journey to the Savage Planet gives you a relatively small, yet densely-packed sandbox map to freely explore and hunt for materials and vital components as you scope the alien world out for your crummy aerospace employer.
The game’s critical path is pretty clearly laid out for you; unlike in some similar exploration-focused games that necessitate a bit of sleuthing, if you just follow your directions and don’t get eaten, you’ll breeze through.
It is worth noting that if you go for a higher degree of completion beyond the critical path, including sidequests and collectibles, the game will definitely become longer, but you don’t have to engage with any of that if you don’t want to. Sometimes it’s nice to just explore a little bit rather than having to run an entire expedition.
4Spec Ops: The Line
Average Clear Time: 6 Hours
Spec Ops: The Line
How long would you say a story needs to last to be emotionally affecting? I guess there isn’t really a metric for something like that, but at the very least, it definitely has to be long enough to get you invested in the characters, premise, and moral, if applicable.
Despite clocking in at just 6 hours,Spec Ops: The Linemanages to be a downright harrowing tale of military intervention gone horribly wrong.
Gameplay-wise, Spec Ops: The Line is a pretty straightforward third-person cover shooter. You’re on one side of an area, baddies are on the other side, shoot ‘em til they go away. Though, since the game is set in the midst of the city of Dubai subsumed by a sandstorm, there are moments when you can shoot out windows to bury foes in the sand.
The real draw here is the story, and without giving anything away, it is genuinely the most haunting story I’ve ever experienced from any kind of military-adjacent media.This is not a story of heroic soldiersfighting for their country, not by a long shot. Technically, Spec Ops: The Line has been delisted on Steam, but there are still physical and digital copies floating around if you know where to look.
3Alan Wake
Average Clear Time: 11 Hours
I think the longest novel I’ve ever read was around 400–500 pages, give or take. I like to read, but I also appreciate a narrative that can resolve in a timely fashion. Narratives and novels, particularly those of horror stories, are the central theme ofAlan Wake, and while it has its slow bits for tension and intrigue, it wraps up in a clean 11 hours.
Alan Wake is a third-person shooter, with some light puzzle-solving and sleuthing elements. Our titular protagonist, horror novelist Alan Wake, is trapped in a supernatural tale of darkness come to life, and he can only repel its shadowy minions with a flashlight and pistol.
You can’t just blast away at everything, you need to shine the light on your foes to reveal their vulnerable bodies.
The combat in Alan Wake is fun enough, though I think what really makes it memorable, perhaps unsurprisingly, is its story. It’s both a fun little deconstruction of horror story tropes and an elaborate love letter to certain horror sub-genres. It literally name-drops Steven King in its first spoken line of dialogue. That’s how you know where this game’s heart is at.
2Bayonetta
Average Clear Time: 11.5 Hours
Character-action games like Devil May Cry are usually fairly short experiences by necessity. They’re designed to be heavily replayable, which would be more difficult if you had to go through hours upon hours of gameplay to get to the tasty bits.
As far as short games go,Bayonettajust skirts the line of our limit, clocking in at about 11.5 hours. It’s actually a little long for a character-action game, but still relatively short, all things considered.
Bayonetta is one of the first works of PlatinumGames, one of the head honchos of character-action in the industry, and a passion project of Hideki Kamiya. Pretty much from the word go, it’s a nonstop action rollercoaster as Umbran Witch Bayonetta takes on hordes of Angels sent straight from the pearly gates to take her head.
I think the best word to describe Bayonetta’s general vibe is “spectacle.” You’ve got exaggerated weapons and combos, culminating in giant summoned fist attacks, pitted against equally giant angelic monstrosities. It’s a game that understands the concept of “escalation of scale” all too well, and keeps its escalation at a steady clip throughout.
1Hi-Fi Rush
Hi-Fi Rush
How do you feel about music tracks that run for a long time? Me, I’m not the biggest fan. That’s why I could never get into The Grateful Dead. Luckily, while it is one of the longer games on this list,Hi-Fi Rushis a character-action game like Bayonetta, which means it’s another nice, tight experience of about 11 hours.
Hi-Fi Rush follows young slacker Chai, who’s been roped into the heinous plans of a massive tech company after he gets a robotic arm installed incorrectly.
The central gimmick of the game is that everything, from enemies to environments, syncs up with the beat of the backing track, with attacks launched on the beat dealing more damage and just generally being more spectacular.
Hi-Fi Rush plays like a really great album, jam-packed with both memorable setpieces and some truly awesome tracks. Fun fact, the game is full of licensed music, but if you’re a streamer or just don’t want to hear it, you can switch to streamer mode and listen to the game’s original soundtrack, which is genuinely just as good if not better.
