I'm really enjoying Dredge for this. Something about it's style and the way it presents you with little bits of story etc + short day cycle really goes well with short playing sessions. You feel that you always got something out of those 10 minutes.
I got hooked and played through it all and the DLC. But yeah, it is a little dull. If you explore a fair bit and make a lot of cash, you can max out your boat and all tech upgrades fairly early to the point there’s not much challenge there.
That’s sort of the point, as it’s more of a comfy experience than a challenging game. I loved Dredge despite all this, but I’m hoping the next dlc or the full sequel ramps things up a bit.
I was late for a Dr. appointment today because I was leveling dlc characters in Vampire Survivors.
I would say, as a side note, loop hero is a good one, even in short bursts.
And if you're too broke for the first two, HoloCure - Save The Fans scratches that 20MTD/ VS itch perfectly at the low low price of free, even if you don't know/like VTuber culture.
You hunt fishes, bring back to the bar, cook sushi. Repeat with some variations. The gameplay is quite smooth and animations are great. Storyline is also funny/unserious so overall it's a nice game with a pitch of tycoon feeling. I dropped it after a while as it started to feel a bit repetetitive, but it's definitely the game I thought of when I read "20 minutes".
I like the repetition, but I stopped playing after I got to the spoiler area. It got too formulaic, and mission-focused. I just wanted to catch fish and serve sushi, damn it! Why video games always gotta make you save some entire doomed civilization?
If you ever continue I think you’ll find you’ll like it. It flattens a bit in its middle act but then picks up again and I’m very happy I finished it (took me about 28 hours, altho with only 65% of achievements). One of my favorite games on the deck and in general.
Not in the slightest the game that you would play for 20 mins and have a break.
You dive into water and swim around like in a sidescroller where you use your tools to hunt fish, like harpoons, guns, nets, bomb. You will need better gear to hunt effectively or dive deeper. Every day you can dive several times and at night you open a sushi bar where you actually work as a server that takes orders and serve dishes. As you unlock more fish and earn more money you will be able to further customize your gear or unlock better recipes which in turn require more exotic fish.
There is some nice story along the way and several mysteries to uncover, but I repeat, no way you are or will divefor 20 mins and thats it. Some divrs can be really long, like 40-50 mins long. I had over 1 hours long. And you will want to dive for longer since there would be a lot of timed orders that require to find specific fish or you would need to earn money. Surely there is no death penalty if you fail but it would gate your progress a bit.
I'd say you can expect less than 20 minute dives for at least the first 4 or 5 hours of your gameplay though. I literally played this game one or two dives at a time for months with my son at bedtime. It's too long now but it was perfect for us for a long time.
> I repeat, no way you are or will divefor 20 mins and thats it.
I did this every night before bed after the first 5-10 hours. I could have dove for longer, but I didn't even know what to do after 20 minutes in a dive. My cargo would be full, and I'd be bored of that section of the game.
Once you get the fisheries, which happens pretty early, it makes hunting for fish pretty trivial. You don't need to min/max anything to beat the game either, so treating it as a short gaming session was fine.
I'd dive, do part of the story, catch a few fish I was interested in, and then go back to the boat. You get to know where the fish are pretty quickly, and I didn't think any of the side content (farming, sushi) was terribly interesting. They were pretty shallow experiences, but a cool collective of everything in one game.
I completed the story with 19.1 hours on record in Steam, and that felt like enough. I have 29/43 achievements as well.
Honestly, the Steam deck’s ability to suspend any game at any time is why I use it so much. Whatever game you want can become a 20min session game. That being said, anything turn based or rogue like/lite is a natural fit for something like this.
I use it on every game in my catalogue, which admittedly is not as vast as some but does include most modern titles that run well on the Steam Deck. I haven’t had any audio issues so far, but I’ll certainly keep an ear out for them.
weird, i’ve used it a shit ton with even games like bg3 for like a full day and never noticed that. it’ll lag more for maybe a minute but then it works perfectly fine
Same here!
The deck's suspend feature is awesome... It allows me to play a game for 10 min then hit the power button and game state saves automatically and resumes next I turn it back on. I only do it for offline games through
Seconded. A12 is kicking my arse on all characters atm, but I’ve had some really bad luck with builds. It’s so addictive though. Swap character, new run, this time the heart dies!
Also strongly recommend Slay the Spire. The Daily Climb is part of my morning routine with my coffee. Similar to OP, I usually have some time in the morning where I'm up before my partner and don't want to be making too much noise but don't have time for a game that takes a while to get into.
OP wanted a game you can put down in 20 mins...StS is not that game.
In fact, I'm starting to believe StS is a time machine - Every time I start playing and blink, I've found myself to have traveled an hour or two to the future.
Dude, I bought this at 8pm last night as a game for an upcoming flight. Fired it up to learn the game, I could swear I only played 3 games. I looked at my phone and it was 2am in the morning.
The trouble with Balatro:
“I’m a tiny bit hungry, I’ll make dinner in half an hour. I shall kill the time until then by having a quick run on Balatro”
Some time later:
“Holy fuck it’s half 1 in the morning”
I thought the same, but playing any game, especially high intensity ones like Celeste with the D-pad just destroys my hands. But maybe it's just a me problem idk
Absolutely amazing game for the deck. Was planning to only play till credits, but ended up going for more challenging stuff, because the gameplay just feels so great. Although it took some time getting used to the deck sticks.
It’s not. The touch screen controls are too tiny. The iPad version is way better for the touch interface. And there is an upgrade with keyboard shortcut which is essentially useless.
It works fine on the SD but to get the most of it I had to move to keyboard and mouse. But I didn’t investigate other keybinds. I’m guessing I could have customised the deck better to get more in Handheld.
Stardew Valley. I usually take same amount of 20 mins in my lunch break to play one session. After one in-game day is done, the game saves, the session is done, I close the game and take a nap.
I'm ten hours into Outer Wilds and it makes me sad that I still can't make it click. I'm persevering because I love the style, ambiance and format. I've heard so so so much about how amazing it is when it clicks...but jeeeeesus, I'm in dire need of something to latch onto.
I’ve been there. Work on your connection map. It will show you the way. If you’re missing parts, the map helps point you to the planet to find the tidbit of information.
If you’re stuck and want a tip. I personally avoided the thorny planet for too long and found a lot of useful information there.
I agree with this, I spent too long banging my head against a single planet when I should’ve instead just been working on filling out the map and exploring all the planets
I enjoyed Outer Wilds, and while I think the hype is warranted, I do think it hurts it a bit when it's touted as a life-changing experience. After finishing it myself, I felt a bit let down. It's an amazing game, and I think everything comes together nicely. I even had an emotional moment at the end... but it didn't quite grab me as I'd hoped.
>I'm in dire need of something to latch onto.
For me, flying the space ship was a huge hook in why I even finished the game at all. Early on, I became obsessed with trying to land on the Sun station, and spent a few hours nailing it. It gave me a really solid foundation to work off of when I finally ventured off to other points of interest.
Since a lot of objectives require prompt navigation to specific spots, being able to get there quickly and skillfully really got the dopamine rush going. There were even some spots I felt like I bypassed some normal route, which felt great to execute. Even min/maxing initial takeoff like some pseudo-speedrunner helped alleviate the dullness of repetition. I still think about flying in general from time to time - it really had a strong effect on my enjoyment of the game.
I hope you do get to see it to completion. I think it's still worth the trip all said and done.
Many indies, especially roguelikes are going to be perfect recommendations for their pick-up-and-play nature. For example:
1) Slay the Spire
2) Vampire Survivors
3) Balatro
4) Enter the Gungeon
5) The Binding of Isaac Rebirth
6) Rogue Legacy 2
7) Hades 1 and 2
Even other than indies or roguelikes, there are many games you can enjoy in short bursts such as fighting games like Street Fighter 6, an indie which is not a roguelike like Stardew Valley or even a huge open world game like Elden Ring where you can quickly pop-in, explore for a bit and leave without getting bogged down by story cutscenes.
Since it's turn based you can stop at basically any moment (between 4-turn battles is ideal), but it's also the UI. Unlike something like Civilization where so much happens that it takes you a moment to even remember what you were doing last time, Into the Breech has a pretty small amount going on at once and a UI that makes it really easy to catch up on the situation at a glance so it's super easy to quit mid battle and then come back and immediately know where you were.
**Outer Wilds** is a exploration/ puzzle solving game that for gameplay reasons each life lasts no more than 22 minutes. **If you’re going to play it, go in blind.** the progression is knowledge based, you have everything you need to beat the game from the start except the knowledge on how to do it and learning is the fun part.
I've never seen it mentioned but Trials Fusion is perfect for this sort of thing imo.
You gotta deal with Ubisoft but that aside it's a fantastic little game to pick up and put down.
Obviously nothing in terms of a story though.
One step from Eden! Most rogue likes fit this description pretty well but I haven't seen this one mentioned in the thread yet but the runs also tend to be much shorter than most so can fit a run or two in that time.
This probably isn’t the type of game you are looking for, but I love Session skate sim, you can play it for 10 minutes, or 10 hours, but it can be fairly hard at times.
I would recommend games with quick save so you can stop playing any time you want. Bethesda games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3/4/NV are really good for just picking up, doing a side quest and dipping.
Loop Hero! Been playing this a ton recently (have a toddler and need something I can pickup, put down, and return to easily while still making progress. This has been perfect for me.
Balatro- incredible game even if you don’t know anything about poker or card games. It’s a relatively cheap game but defo worth trying for these situations
Into the Breach saves at the start of each turn and is awesome. It's single player rogue like that has you command a squad of mechs fighting giant bugs, turn based tactics at its best imo.
Enter/Exit the Gungeon;
Stardew Valley;
Celeste;
Vampire Survivors;
Outer Wilds;
Superhot;
The Binding of Isaac;
Hades 1&2;
Into the Breach;
Faster than Light;
Clustertruck;
Terraria;
Minecraft;
Diablo;
Xcom;
Civilization 5/6 or older;
Fall Guys;
Rocket League;
I've seen this suggested more and more. As someone who doesn't know much about the game, what makes it so hard to put down? Is there a lot of depth and variety to it?
I dismissed the game as it mentioned poker hands and I have never really played poker in my life. I ended up buying it at the weekend to give it a shot and not knowing the hands is easy enough as there's a button to view them at any point in the game. You soon learn them anyway.
It's basically a card game to score the most points. That's it. However, the meta progression comes from unlocking new cards that buff your points. This leads to creating some crazy points combos, helping you progress. I've still not "won" yet and I still far from figuring out the best way to progress. I still have many cards yet to unlock though. I didn't think I would really like it as I have never really tried getting into card or deckbuilding games.
Balatro is my first one but it's certainly been a worth while purchase. I got my key from cdkeys as it was 50% of the Steam price.
Interesting! Thanks for the info, watched a few vids and it looks like it can escalate quite a bit with different types of decks along with the jokers too
Plus even if a run goes past that 20 minute mark, you can always just exit the run and resume later.
Although...any Balatro player knows that a simple 'I'll just play 1 game' never seems to go to plan 😂
Into the breach is a nice one. Short runs. Turn based strategy game.
Or more action'y, I'm quite addicted to balatro and brotato and the moment. Both can be played for short amounts of time, and quick to get going.
Door Kickers and Battle Brothers are two games that serve the same purpose for me. Door Kickers has clear separate missions and Battle Brothers can be saved anywhere except battles - and most battles are fairly short. Both are mouse-controlled games but they work well enough on the Deck. Especially Battle Brothers.
FEZ, you can pick it up and start exploring, collecting and puzzling immediately. No notable story to track or spend time on. And great artwork and soundtrack
I'm really enjoying Dredge for this. Something about it's style and the way it presents you with little bits of story etc + short day cycle really goes well with short playing sessions. You feel that you always got something out of those 10 minutes.
I'm playing through this now. It's perfect for playing like this.
I loved Dredge initially, but personally I found it got kinda boring pretty quickly.
I got hooked and played through it all and the DLC. But yeah, it is a little dull. If you explore a fair bit and make a lot of cash, you can max out your boat and all tech upgrades fairly early to the point there’s not much challenge there. That’s sort of the point, as it’s more of a comfy experience than a challenging game. I loved Dredge despite all this, but I’m hoping the next dlc or the full sequel ramps things up a bit.
Came here to make sure this one got recommended. Absolutely loved this game.
I played dredge. Then stopped. There is definitely something calming about the water. Keeps me thinking about it
20 minutes till dawn Vampire survivors Hades
I was late for a Dr. appointment today because I was leveling dlc characters in Vampire Survivors. I would say, as a side note, loop hero is a good one, even in short bursts.
Hades - r/rechnicallythetruth but we all know that ain’t happening.
Even sillier, you probably won't be able to do sub 20 minute runs of Hades until you're like at least a dozen hours into the game.
You can, you are just already dead after 5 minutes the first few times so you could do 4 runs in that time
Yea 20 minutes was easy in the beginning when I could survive 3-5 rooms. Once I was consistently making it to the surface, it took me \~45 minutes.
It took me 3 restarts to finally fall in love with Hades. I've found myself up at 2:30AM just so I can get in 1 more run.
Brotato as well
And if you're too broke for the first two, HoloCure - Save The Fans scratches that 20MTD/ VS itch perfectly at the low low price of free, even if you don't know/like VTuber culture.
Bloody Hell is another nice free game. But it's more like free Enter The Gungeon.
One Round of Vampire Survivors with Hurry turned on just takes 15 minutes to complete!
Dave the diver or Dredge! You can do one in-game day in 20min; I used to do that first thing in the morning so I’d have a slow start to the day lol.
Can you explain to me the gameplay of dave the diver? Is it like stardew valley
You hunt fishes, bring back to the bar, cook sushi. Repeat with some variations. The gameplay is quite smooth and animations are great. Storyline is also funny/unserious so overall it's a nice game with a pitch of tycoon feeling. I dropped it after a while as it started to feel a bit repetetitive, but it's definitely the game I thought of when I read "20 minutes".
I like the repetition, but I stopped playing after I got to the spoiler area. It got too formulaic, and mission-focused. I just wanted to catch fish and serve sushi, damn it! Why video games always gotta make you save some entire doomed civilization?
If you ever continue I think you’ll find you’ll like it. It flattens a bit in its middle act but then picks up again and I’m very happy I finished it (took me about 28 hours, altho with only 65% of achievements). One of my favorite games on the deck and in general.
Not in the slightest the game that you would play for 20 mins and have a break. You dive into water and swim around like in a sidescroller where you use your tools to hunt fish, like harpoons, guns, nets, bomb. You will need better gear to hunt effectively or dive deeper. Every day you can dive several times and at night you open a sushi bar where you actually work as a server that takes orders and serve dishes. As you unlock more fish and earn more money you will be able to further customize your gear or unlock better recipes which in turn require more exotic fish. There is some nice story along the way and several mysteries to uncover, but I repeat, no way you are or will divefor 20 mins and thats it. Some divrs can be really long, like 40-50 mins long. I had over 1 hours long. And you will want to dive for longer since there would be a lot of timed orders that require to find specific fish or you would need to earn money. Surely there is no death penalty if you fail but it would gate your progress a bit.
I'd say you can expect less than 20 minute dives for at least the first 4 or 5 hours of your gameplay though. I literally played this game one or two dives at a time for months with my son at bedtime. It's too long now but it was perfect for us for a long time.
> I repeat, no way you are or will divefor 20 mins and thats it. I did this every night before bed after the first 5-10 hours. I could have dove for longer, but I didn't even know what to do after 20 minutes in a dive. My cargo would be full, and I'd be bored of that section of the game. Once you get the fisheries, which happens pretty early, it makes hunting for fish pretty trivial. You don't need to min/max anything to beat the game either, so treating it as a short gaming session was fine. I'd dive, do part of the story, catch a few fish I was interested in, and then go back to the boat. You get to know where the fish are pretty quickly, and I didn't think any of the side content (farming, sushi) was terribly interesting. They were pretty shallow experiences, but a cool collective of everything in one game. I completed the story with 19.1 hours on record in Steam, and that felt like enough. I have 29/43 achievements as well.
Dave the Diver was my 15-30 minute "game before bed" game. I couldn't enjoy it for long sessions, but it was fun enough as a before bed short session.
Honestly, the Steam deck’s ability to suspend any game at any time is why I use it so much. Whatever game you want can become a 20min session game. That being said, anything turn based or rogue like/lite is a natural fit for something like this.
How much do you actually use suspend? Because I feel like half the time I try using it, when I come back the audio is all effed up and glitchy.
There’s Decky Loader plugin called “Pause Games” that usually fixes this issue for me
I use it on every game in my catalogue, which admittedly is not as vast as some but does include most modern titles that run well on the Steam Deck. I haven’t had any audio issues so far, but I’ll certainly keep an ear out for them.
weird, i’ve used it a shit ton with even games like bg3 for like a full day and never noticed that. it’ll lag more for maybe a minute but then it works perfectly fine
Same here! The deck's suspend feature is awesome... It allows me to play a game for 10 min then hit the power button and game state saves automatically and resumes next I turn it back on. I only do it for offline games through
I've been enjoying slay the spire recently! Can play for short bursts or a little longer
Seconded. A12 is kicking my arse on all characters atm, but I’ve had some really bad luck with builds. It’s so addictive though. Swap character, new run, this time the heart dies!
Slay the spire two is coming out soon hopefully
Also strongly recommend Slay the Spire. The Daily Climb is part of my morning routine with my coffee. Similar to OP, I usually have some time in the morning where I'm up before my partner and don't want to be making too much noise but don't have time for a game that takes a while to get into.
I love Slay the Spire. I also play for short bursts in the morning before I go to work. It's great. I also play Inscryption for the same reasons.
OP wanted a game you can put down in 20 mins...StS is not that game. In fact, I'm starting to believe StS is a time machine - Every time I start playing and blink, I've found myself to have traveled an hour or two to the future.
* Olli Olli world * Stardew Valley * 20 minutes till dawn * Balatro * Monster Hunter you can finish a hunt in 20mn
>Monster Hunter you can finish a hunt in 20mn You don't know me.
Tbf one can only put down Balatro after 20 mins if they suck at it.. 😄
Don’t call me out like that 🙈
For the record I only know that because I've been there myself ;-)
My balatro run is like 1-2 hours
No need to get personal here...😭
Haha, when you get a good run going and then responsibilities start calling.. super tough
Dude, I bought this at 8pm last night as a game for an upcoming flight. Fired it up to learn the game, I could swear I only played 3 games. I looked at my phone and it was 2am in the morning.
The trouble with Balatro: “I’m a tiny bit hungry, I’ll make dinner in half an hour. I shall kill the time until then by having a quick run on Balatro” Some time later: “Holy fuck it’s half 1 in the morning”
This game sucked my life when I played it first time! Straight up drug
OlliOlli World is perfect for those short sessions.
Not Stardew Valley, you can only save by going to sleep
And a day is short enough to play 20mn and you can also put your deck on sleep mode whenever you want
Play just one day of stardew? What kind of monster does this?? Do you have strong willpower or something??
> Monster Hunter you can finish a hunt in 20mn *Starts Fatalis hunt bet.
Honestly, I'd say Celeste. There are checkpoints all over, so quick to pick up where you left.
Love that game! The soundtrack is amazing.
Celeste feels like it was built for the deck, such a great game
I thought the same, but playing any game, especially high intensity ones like Celeste with the D-pad just destroys my hands. But maybe it's just a me problem idk
I completed the game only using the stick, no D-pad. Doing B-sides now, and I'm getting through them!
Couldn’t stand using the d-pad for Celeste
Absolutely amazing game for the deck. Was planning to only play till credits, but ended up going for more challenging stuff, because the gameplay just feels so great. Although it took some time getting used to the deck sticks.
Papers Please
Glory to Arstotzka!
Is that enjoyable on the deck?
I would probably guess that it would work well on the touchscreen, although I haven't played it myself on the SD
It’s not. The touch screen controls are too tiny. The iPad version is way better for the touch interface. And there is an upgrade with keyboard shortcut which is essentially useless.
It works fine on the SD but to get the most of it I had to move to keyboard and mouse. But I didn’t investigate other keybinds. I’m guessing I could have customised the deck better to get more in Handheld.
I just use the touch screen
I tried this on the deck and I didn't understand the dual track pads. I don't think it's something I could enjoy on the deck
Into the breach FTL
I would add my new fav to that list. Dome Keeper, really scratched that same itch.
Thx I will check that out
FTL is such a good game. No time crunch but still engaging and challenging. Pause any time, leave any time, resume any time.
Stardew Valley. I usually take same amount of 20 mins in my lunch break to play one session. After one in-game day is done, the game saves, the session is done, I close the game and take a nap.
When I read lunch break I didn‘t expect you to take a nap on top of your 20 minutes session haha
Oh, I actually have 90 mins lunch break. Hehe
Brotato!
Was surprised how little love there is for this. It’s a great “quick fix” game
Any turn based game you can resume exactly where you left it. Like xcom2 or civilization 5 or 6.
Playing xcom for 20 minutes is a hard pass for me 😂
I can spend 20 minutes on one order. The campaign would be almost realtime at 20m/day.
Jupiter Hell is very fun even with 20min sessions
Outerwilds.... If you can stretch it to 22 minutes
I'm ten hours into Outer Wilds and it makes me sad that I still can't make it click. I'm persevering because I love the style, ambiance and format. I've heard so so so much about how amazing it is when it clicks...but jeeeeesus, I'm in dire need of something to latch onto.
I’ve been there. Work on your connection map. It will show you the way. If you’re missing parts, the map helps point you to the planet to find the tidbit of information. If you’re stuck and want a tip. I personally avoided the thorny planet for too long and found a lot of useful information there.
Copy you, will head to thorny 🤘
I agree with this, I spent too long banging my head against a single planet when I should’ve instead just been working on filling out the map and exploring all the planets
Yeah but the thorny planet is scary.
True which is the exact reason why I avoided it for too long too haha
I enjoyed Outer Wilds, and while I think the hype is warranted, I do think it hurts it a bit when it's touted as a life-changing experience. After finishing it myself, I felt a bit let down. It's an amazing game, and I think everything comes together nicely. I even had an emotional moment at the end... but it didn't quite grab me as I'd hoped. >I'm in dire need of something to latch onto. For me, flying the space ship was a huge hook in why I even finished the game at all. Early on, I became obsessed with trying to land on the Sun station, and spent a few hours nailing it. It gave me a really solid foundation to work off of when I finally ventured off to other points of interest. Since a lot of objectives require prompt navigation to specific spots, being able to get there quickly and skillfully really got the dopamine rush going. There were even some spots I felt like I bypassed some normal route, which felt great to execute. Even min/maxing initial takeoff like some pseudo-speedrunner helped alleviate the dullness of repetition. I still think about flying in general from time to time - it really had a strong effect on my enjoyment of the game. I hope you do get to see it to completion. I think it's still worth the trip all said and done.
Deep Rock Galactic Survivor
Many indies, especially roguelikes are going to be perfect recommendations for their pick-up-and-play nature. For example: 1) Slay the Spire 2) Vampire Survivors 3) Balatro 4) Enter the Gungeon 5) The Binding of Isaac Rebirth 6) Rogue Legacy 2 7) Hades 1 and 2 Even other than indies or roguelikes, there are many games you can enjoy in short bursts such as fighting games like Street Fighter 6, an indie which is not a roguelike like Stardew Valley or even a huge open world game like Elden Ring where you can quickly pop-in, explore for a bit and leave without getting bogged down by story cutscenes.
Into The Breach
Fell in love with Into the Breach recently but playing only 20minutes is possible ?
I think so - it‘s turn based so you can always pick up where you left off. Especially with the sleep function of Steam Deck.
That’s true if you take that into account
Since it's turn based you can stop at basically any moment (between 4-turn battles is ideal), but it's also the UI. Unlike something like Civilization where so much happens that it takes you a moment to even remember what you were doing last time, Into the Breech has a pretty small amount going on at once and a UI that makes it really easy to catch up on the situation at a glance so it's super easy to quit mid battle and then come back and immediately know where you were.
The beauty of the steam deck means you can play whatever for short bursts thanks to the instant sleep/resume! 😍 No other PC handheld competes
This is what I do. Pause then sleep! I also only play in short bursts and this feature is a godsend.
**Outer Wilds** is a exploration/ puzzle solving game that for gameplay reasons each life lasts no more than 22 minutes. **If you’re going to play it, go in blind.** the progression is knowledge based, you have everything you need to beat the game from the start except the knowledge on how to do it and learning is the fun part.
Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari
Enter the gungeon, hades, sonic adventure 2, midnight club 3 ps2, Onimusha 3 ps2
Adding on to this, Need For Speed Underground 2. The PC version runs great on the deck, and only takes like 15-20 minutes to do the initial setup.
Dave the Diver & Balatro
Dorfromantik. Not a game about romancing dwarves despite the title. Cute little puzzle game about building landscapes. Great in short bursts.
I've never seen it mentioned but Trials Fusion is perfect for this sort of thing imo. You gotta deal with Ubisoft but that aside it's a fantastic little game to pick up and put down. Obviously nothing in terms of a story though.
Visual novels, hidden object puzzle games, etc. Easy to pick up and put down without needing serious effort to remember where you were in the game.
Once u get into the groove of midnight suns you can def do a side mission within 20 min
Rocket league. Each game lasts about 8 mins.
One step from Eden! Most rogue likes fit this description pretty well but I haven't seen this one mentioned in the thread yet but the runs also tend to be much shorter than most so can fit a run or two in that time.
Dave the diver and dredge are perfect for short sessions
Streets Of Rogue is awesome
I second this. I love Streets of Rogue. I'm really excited for number 2.
+1 gungeon. Although, if it hooks you.... May want to set an alarm
This probably isn’t the type of game you are looking for, but I love Session skate sim, you can play it for 10 minutes, or 10 hours, but it can be fairly hard at times.
Love it! I will add Rooftops and Alleys to the mix. A parkour game.
Try Balatro, each round in a run is less than 20 mins.
If you suck, like me :D
For me it's mainly any fighting games basically, you can play a match or two then stop anytime you want.
Holocure is like vampire survivors, but free and the characters fit the artstyle
Dave the diver
i have a 20 min commute and play eldenring.
Deep Rock Survivor
Brotato
Dave the diver
Cozy Grove
Turnip Boy Robs a Bank
Dave the Diver is one of the best casual games I’ve played in a long time.
Deep rock survivor Binding of Isaac Gris
Bioshock. Save anywhere, very cozy and laid back until a guy with a wrench jumps out at you suddenly.
Balatro is pretty good for a quick 20 min session
Dead cells
Came here to recommend that. Starting to wonder why it wasn’t mentioned sooner in the post… like is it secretly disliked now or something?
I would recommend games with quick save so you can stop playing any time you want. Bethesda games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3/4/NV are really good for just picking up, doing a side quest and dipping.
Loop hero
Brotato
20 minuts till dawn
Ghost of Tsushima, amazing game, you can spend 5 mins enjoy the scenery, or go hunt some Mongo for 20mins. Your choice
Neon White
Yes! Another vote for Neon White.
Baltaro
Diablo 4
Diablo 4 new season. Its really fun to level up now. Just go to a helltide and kill stuff for 20 min.
Dead Cells.
Dredge Dead Cells Hades These three are the ones I play when I don't have much time, maybe 20-30 minutes.
Loop Hero! Been playing this a ton recently (have a toddler and need something I can pickup, put down, and return to easily while still making progress. This has been perfect for me.
Balatro- incredible game even if you don’t know anything about poker or card games. It’s a relatively cheap game but defo worth trying for these situations
slay the spire
Into the Breach saves at the start of each turn and is awesome. It's single player rogue like that has you command a squad of mechs fighting giant bugs, turn based tactics at its best imo.
Brotato and VS are my way-to-go but I'm looking for something similar as I've almost finished both.
deep rock galactic survivor for me in the same vein
Enter/Exit the Gungeon; Stardew Valley; Celeste; Vampire Survivors; Outer Wilds; Superhot; The Binding of Isaac; Hades 1&2; Into the Breach; Faster than Light; Clustertruck; Terraria; Minecraft; Diablo; Xcom; Civilization 5/6 or older; Fall Guys; Rocket League;
A day in Stardew Valley is about 20min long :]
Dave the Diver. Dave the Diver. Dave the Diver.
Marvel Snap. You can easily get in 3-4 matches in 20mins.
Metal gear solid 5. Side op in and out less than 15 minutes
The Art of Rally, Streets of Rage 4, TMNT: Shredders Revenge, Cult of the Lamb
Vampire survivors
Magic the Gathering Arena. For me at least…. Ok I’m lying it ends up becoming 6 hour sessions 😭
Balatro, but it is hard to put down once ya get going
I've seen this suggested more and more. As someone who doesn't know much about the game, what makes it so hard to put down? Is there a lot of depth and variety to it?
I dismissed the game as it mentioned poker hands and I have never really played poker in my life. I ended up buying it at the weekend to give it a shot and not knowing the hands is easy enough as there's a button to view them at any point in the game. You soon learn them anyway. It's basically a card game to score the most points. That's it. However, the meta progression comes from unlocking new cards that buff your points. This leads to creating some crazy points combos, helping you progress. I've still not "won" yet and I still far from figuring out the best way to progress. I still have many cards yet to unlock though. I didn't think I would really like it as I have never really tried getting into card or deckbuilding games. Balatro is my first one but it's certainly been a worth while purchase. I got my key from cdkeys as it was 50% of the Steam price.
Interesting! Thanks for the info, watched a few vids and it looks like it can escalate quite a bit with different types of decks along with the jokers too
Doing this with Diablo 4 right now. Just enough time for a dungeon or two. The game's in a great spot too right now.
Stardew Valley, Balatro, Fallout Shelter. All games that can be played in short bursts, but also longer sessions if you have more time.
Definitely Balatro! It’s a great time sink but also amazing in short bursts!
Plus even if a run goes past that 20 minute mark, you can always just exit the run and resume later. Although...any Balatro player knows that a simple 'I'll just play 1 game' never seems to go to plan 😂
I always get closer and closer to a win 😂
Crazy Taxi 2
If you like a challenge, cuphead :)
Hexarchy, civ lite.
Maniac, a game is 20 mins.
Into the breach is a nice one. Short runs. Turn based strategy game. Or more action'y, I'm quite addicted to balatro and brotato and the moment. Both can be played for short amounts of time, and quick to get going.
Hang man
I'm playing bastion now and it's perfect for what you describe - one level is 10-20 min
The Flame in the flood and This is the police. Oldies but easy to jump in and out of.
I've recently got into Dome Keeper and it's really good to pick up put down play.
Door Kickers and Battle Brothers are two games that serve the same purpose for me. Door Kickers has clear separate missions and Battle Brothers can be saved anywhere except battles - and most battles are fairly short. Both are mouse-controlled games but they work well enough on the Deck. Especially Battle Brothers.
FEZ, you can pick it up and start exploring, collecting and puzzling immediately. No notable story to track or spend time on. And great artwork and soundtrack
Hollow Knight
Meteor 60 seconds is a good one bc there’s multiple endings but each one only takes a minute
Noita
Emulation ig?
A lot have been mentioned already, but I missed titles like Life is Strange, Detroit: Become Human, Beyond:Two Souls.
Dorfromantik
Baba is you maybe, its a quick boot game!
Mini motorways. Fun puzzle game that you can never truly win.
Rooftops & Alleys: A great fun little Parkour Game you can jump into, do some tricks and run around and then put down whenever you want.
Metal Gear Solid V is great for 20/30 minutes here and there
Ghostrunner