Roguelike games are generally pretty good for this as they will have shorter run durations with some kind of metaprogression. Slay The Spire is the first one that came to my mind.

Also games that have some smaller unit of progression which can be measured independently of the larger game, like Darkest Dungeon, which takes ages to finish, but each individual delve into the dungeon is relatively short and straightforward.

Roguelikes, such as Hades. A single run won’t take you longer than 30mins (and often far, far less than that – you’ll die, a lot).

Every run is progress. And if you feel like you’re not progressing fast enough, you can turn on “God Mode” (the protagonist is a god) and gain 2% damage reduction after each death, to make subsequent runs a little easier (no penalty in doing so, either).

I would say Outer Wilds is very good. You have the ability to beat the game as soon as you start, but you don’t have the knowledge to beat it.

Without spoiling it as it’s a very spoiler sensitive game, you can spend as long as you want gathering all of the knowledge to beat the game, you aren’t punished for taking your time. And all the knowledge you collect is stored in the games computer as long as you save so you can play for 22 minutes if you want, or multiple hours.

I beat the game over the course of a few weeks playing for various amounts of time. Recently played the DLC too and that went the same.

Totally different genre, but I liked how Celeste approached this.

If you struggle to complete it there are tons of accessibility options to make the game more approachable.

And the content necessary to finish the games story is not too much, while giving challenging -well- challenges to anyone who wants to spend more time with the game.

And you clear the game screen by screen making it possible to only play it a short bit at a time.

It’s almost a bonus that the story and soundtrack are fucking beautiful.

Sea of Stars is broken up into nice little chunks between save points. Also has ‘relics’ which can modify the game to be more your speed.

Rocket League. Games are quick, you can play one or many in a session. I don’t know if epic has ruined it yet, but last I played the good old core game was still there.

i think bethesda games do it well but you gotta make sure you dont stop playing in the middle of a dungeon because then you will forget what the hell you were doing. but going at it like 1 dungeon or quest at a time is rather nice, its how ive played it for the last couple years

Not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’ve been enjoying Idling to rule the gods. (Steam/Android cross save)

It’s an idle game that could take years to “beat”, has a pet collection/dungeon game that’s pretty fun.

You can progress only checking in a couple times a day for a few minutes, some challenges (for progression/QOL upgrades) require more activity, but overall has a nice feeling of day to day improvement.

I realized I only have the patience for (relatively) short singleplayer games (I just hate grinding in general in video games).

Some of my favorites are:
NieR:Automata (around 40-60 hours of playtime. This one might seem ironic, as it does have some repetition, but it has no grinding and always something interesting new. It also has by far the best story of any game I’ve ever played)

The Beginners Guide (~4 hours of gameplay. It is super unique and has a cool take on psychology, which I haven’t seen in any other game or movie. But you need to play it all the way to the end for it to make sense)

Noita (hard rouge like, and the only one I really enjoy. It’s also very unique in its genre and you can always save and quit.)

Balatro (technically also a rouge lite, but with playing poker hands. It has short rounds and is a casual game, if you only have a few minutes ans don’t know what to play)

Hellcard is an isometric dungeon looter that lets you customize how long the dungeon should be, time-wise. So, of you’ve got, say, 15 minutes, bam! 15-minute dungeon run.

I’m not sure how precise it is, but the devs really went out of their way for the feature!

I don’t play Hitman in short bursts, but I think you certainly could. The sandbox is there for you to figure out and mess around in. As long as you get your target killed and get out, it doesn’t matter if you did it quick, slow, in a clown suit, or just happen to kill every other non-target NPC in the map either.

I’ve been playing pseudoregalia lately and it’s been great in short sessions. It’s an N64 inspired 3D platformer. The only negative for the short sessions is that you do need to find a save point to quit, but in my experience they’re never more than 5 mins away.

Somewhat unexpectedly as its a free to play live service game and is notoriously grindy.

Warframe.

Last year was fire for them, they’ve got:
• cross platform play and save up
• a string of great updates
• working on reducing the overly grindy bits.
• its less pay to win now as the best weapons are purely behind gameplay.
• released an iphone version of the game and are working on an android one, I believe both are intended to be attached to the rest of the player base.

You can play a few matches(sub-30 minutes, usually sub 15) in a session and that’s fine. You don’t need any of the Prime warframes to do any content.

That really depends on what you’re looking for. In general, I find shorter games to respect my time more. So here’s my process:

1. collect some recommendations (here, reddit, game reviewers, etc)
2. look up time to beat on How Long to Beat, and add to wishlist if it seems reasonable (e.g. <10 hours for a puzzle game or platformer, 10-20 for an action/story game, etc)
3. buy games when I run out based on reviews on the games in my wishlist

Some examples:

• Little Nightmares, INSIDE, Darq, and A Juggler’s Tale - 2D puzzle-platformers at <5 hours each
• Ori and the Blind Forest, Blue Fire, and Headlander - metroidvanias at 5-10 hours
• Manifold Garden, Return of the Obra Dinn, Portal/Portal 2 - puzzle games a- 5-10 hours

Some longer games are also great, and I mostly look for lack of grinding, ability to save whenever, and praise for the story, such as:

• Yakuza series - can play in 5-10 min increments, but reserve an hour for boss fights (super long and high quality cutscenes)
• Ys series - older games are short (1&2), later games are longer, and saves aren’t super frequent (about 15-20 min between save points), but I think the gameplay and story are worthwhile; favorites are Ys 1 (really old), Ys Origin (11-ish hours per play-through, 3 play throughs needed, but each is satisfying); grinding is quite rare for a JRPG

I find that the more I avoid the super popular AAA games, the happier I am with my limited playtime.

Any TBS game with save function (which is very common)