In praise of the four-hour game

Somewhere along the way we started treating length as quality, as if a game that takes fifty hours must be better value than one that takes five. On mobile especially, I think that's backwards. A tight, complete experience beats a bloated one nearly every time.

Hollow Lantern is about four hours long and I loved every one of them. It says what it wants to say, tells its little story, and then ends before it wears out its welcome. When I finished, I felt satisfied, not exhausted.

Padding is the enemy. So many games stretch themselves with backtracking, repeated fetch quests, and difficulty spikes designed to slow you down rather than challenge you. A short game that trusts you to be done is a rarer and braver thing.

So don't skip a game just because someone says it's short. Ask instead whether every hour earns its place. The best ones do.