In praise of the short adventure game

I finished Hollow Tide in two evenings and I'm glad it ended when it did. Short games get overlooked because we're trained to value hours-per-dollar, but a tight few hours can hit harder than a bloated open world.

A good short adventure knows its one idea and sees it through. Hollow Tide is about a flooded town and the people who left, and every scene serves that. Nothing is padded to justify a bigger runtime.

On mobile this length is a gift. You can actually finish the thing before the next shiny app distracts you. There's a quiet satisfaction in closing a story instead of leaving it half-played forever.

So don't skip a game just because it's brief. Some of my favourite mobile experiences this year were over in an afternoon, and I still think about them.