Exploring the Itch.io Collection #5

It’s been a while since I last did one of these! I figured I would do one to fill in while I make my way through larger games that take longer to finish.

Last month, I spent an entire week re-making the list of games in my collection over on itch.io, because I felt the original was incomplete and I wanted to make it feel right. The result? Well, instead of about 800, I actually have 1269 games to check out. That’s without counting the 80 I covered last year, or the other 26 I already had on Steam and which I have either already played or will play in the future, for a grand total of 1375 games. …I know, that’s a lot. And more than 500 of them don’t have recorded times on HowLongToBeat.

Most of today’s article was written last year. I added to it after every super-short game I played. A few of the ones covered here, though, have been played this past week. I can’t promise to cover 80 games like this once again in 2026, but any progress will be good. Especially with those revised numbers.

As stated in the Index, I have this page where anyone can see the games I have already tested on the platform. You can always go back to it to see how much progress I’ve made in that collection, or which games are coming up in the next article. I still include a link to every game I discuss here, since I am giving visibility to everything I cover in these articles, and you can go check out each one. Even if I didn’t like one of them, you can go check it out for yourself; maybe YOU will enjoy it!

Experiences

Can I at least get a glass of water to help that
block of brick and sand down?

The Indifferent Wonder of an Edible Place: In the fashion of taking a metaphorical image for a real issue and making it literal, in this game you are someone who eats buildings to make them disappear. This is accompanied, and inspired, by a poem from 1960, translated to English in 1983, about the historical erasure done by the state of Bombay. In the game itself, you are told to eat specific numbered pieces of a large tower. If you don’t eat the correct piece, your character gets poisoned and is incapacitated for a moment. You can use the scope with the right-click button to figure out where the next “correct” piece is. Either way, this is history you’re making disappear, with no way to get it back.

If you see a giant green eye under war trenches, I think you
may be suffering from something worse than PTSD.

Please follow: A walking simulator/horror/puzzle combo in which you play a lone soldier venturing into the tunnels dug by the enemies and find… something. Deeper into the tunnel, there are puzzles involving worms, giant leeches, and other supernatural stuff. This short exploration ends with a freaky acid trip. The game’s look is very “early 3D” of video games (think N64 or PS1), the sound design grossed me out the entire way through, and the visuals…. Jesus, that’s freaky. It’s horror alright.

Quick Review: Human Resource Machine

The day I thought I was done delivering numbers in a factory, they pull me right back in!

Only one employee to do all this? Geez, big companies
and their stupid staff cuts...

A game by Tomorrow Corporation released on October 15th, 2015, Human Resource Machine can best be described as a “programming puzzle game”. You are not quite in control of your character; the crux of gameplay is setting up a series of commands, and then seeing whether they yield the desired result. Then, if the solution didn’t work: Extensively test each step, correct the bugs, make sure you don’t create ten more by accident (the joys of programming!), run, playtest and debug until you get the right combination of events to solve the puzzle.

In this game’s context, you start as a new employee in some nebulous delivery company, and you are tasked on each floor with delivering specific numbers from the Inbox area, and to the Outbox. The requirement changes every time. Your first commands are Inbox and Outbox, obviously, and starting at the second level you obtain the Jump command, which you can set after any other command and place the jump destination anywhere in the program, even at the very start, to skip steps or create a loop.

Still not sure why they added letters here, other than to make
your tasks even harder to deal with. Congrats to this game for
making me dread/hate letters, somehow.

If you think that's a lot of arrows going up and down
and all over the place in the command line... Ha. It gets
soooo much worse later on.

Past these are the Copyfrom and Copyto commands. Your worker can use the square tiles at the center of the room to set down numbers from the Inbox for later use, or copy a number already set there. Well… numbers, or letters. After which you can deliver to Outbox a copied number. After which, you get increasingly complex requests, such as Outboxing a set of two numbers in the reverse order (set the first on a square, deliver the second, pick up the first with Copyfrom, deliver it). After this? We get commands for addition and subtraction. And new Jump commands with conditions (jumping to other sets of commands if the number is 0, or negative).

Why the Hell does the program thinks letters count as a
zero anyway?? Shaking my damn head...

These add up on the command board, and it can turn into a complete mess of orders and arrows pointing up and down and everywhere, so the game later introduces the ability to leave notes along the command line, and a few levels later, the same for squares on the ground, “naming” them so you can remember their purpose. Great idea! Or, would be if you could actually type that text somehow, but instead all you have is your mouse, a large brush, and you can only draw the letters, so good luck fitting more than 7 characters on there. For the smaller print of the floor tiles, I can understand, but the notes within the program? Come on now.

"Mult"? ...I play too much Balatro...

Ugh! Management, never happy. Why do I still bother with
this when I could be working anywhere else...

And now, the mechanic that will make you go “Oh, this is a programming game”, something you might either love, or hate, or be divided on as I was: If you come up with a functional but imperfect solution for the set of numbers you were given, you’ll be told that it did work as intended… but then, your boss refuses the solution and gives you an Inbox sequence that will make your solution fail. By running the simulation, you can follow step by step and figure out where things go wrong – and you can rewind at will, but that’s not going to help if you can’t spot the error (or can’t figure out a way to solve it that doesn’t break something else)…

Oh hey, I finally did something right!

The system for this one is robust and complex, and there’s a bunch of decent mechanics and ideas to be found. The complexity increases as you’re tasked with tougher elements to deal with – stuff like multiplication, zero-terminated strings, Fibonacci sequences, and more. If you’re looking for a crash course puzzle game on programming, this is about as close as it gets, warts and all. It’s satisfying when your solution works for every number set, but it can be very hard to get there, and when it doesn't work, good luck figuring out where you went wrong. However, if you do love these, you can go for the extra challenges where you must reach a level's solution in the smallest amount of steps and/or moves (some levels have “best” solutions that can only be one or the other).

Not one I’d think I’d finish, but I can see why someone would love it enough to strive for its completion.

Human Resource Machine is available on Steam for 14.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Beltmatic

Imagine, if you will, every factory-building game ever, but reduced to the simplest expression.

Just one of many, many factories.

A creation of Notional Games released on March 29th, 2024, Beltmatic puts you in charge of a “factory” in which numbers are created. You see numbers scattered around the giant map, and a big delivery area in the circle. All the numbers you create must be directed to this delivery area using treadmills and extractors. Set an extractor onto a number, link it to the delivery area with treadmills. Collect enough of the number that’s requested, and you go up a level! Now you have a different number to collect, and you may have unlocked something new.

It takes so much work in the early game to get numbers
anywhere close to 10...

At first, all you have is 1s, but then you’ll unlock 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on – it doesn’t seem like much, but these add up. As you level up, your prime request is the number on the delivery space – and these numbers become harder to obtain. It’s not always a prime, but it usually is, or it’s just one or two operations away from a prime number. You unlock new tools over time; the first is a bridge allowing your treadmills to cross over each other, which quickly becomes necessary.

The mathematical buildings have different shapes and function differently from each other. Most involve an A and a B – yes, we’re getting algebraic in here –, the operation, and its result. First is the adder, A+B. Then it’s the multiplier, A*B. The subtractors and dividers are A-B and A÷B, so you must pay very close attention to which number is sent where. For division, you end up with both the proper result, and then the remainder (ex. 5÷2=2, with remainder of 1), so you can use these to obtain other numbers that you can redirect elsewhere if necessary. The final operation is the exponentiator, or A^B; you can get some big numbers out of that one. It takes a while to unlock every option but having them all available is a plus.

Your factory will get pretty damn big after a while.

The final unlock is a storage box, which you can put on the field to store one number into a single area, so that your buildings can keep producing numbers instead of letting them get stuck at the end of a treadmill. Storage squares can contain up to 10,000 of a number. In addition, you can create new treadmills leading out of a storage square and into more operations and buildings.

Alright, I've made the number I wanted, not to tie it all
back to the delivery area. That shouldn't take too long.

But you don’t have just one number to produce every time; you can level up your treadmills and buildings so that they’ll churn out operations faster, allowing for more numbers to get produced per minute and reduce clutter as numbers go through. This will subtract a lot of the time taken for numbers to get to your facility after going through many other buildings on the way. However, leveling up any building will be tough, as you need to collect a large amount of up to three different numbers beforehand. There is no other cost to upgrading a building or the treadmills; just the hard work of making the numbers through complex series of operations, and getting them home.

With all 6 buildings unlocked, that’s an extra 18 numbers to crunch. This multiplies the factories around your reception area – not to mention just how much it divides your attention. Good thing there’s a menu keeping track of all the numbers getting fed into your delivery dock, and which ones are no longer necessary – this can allow you to cut off the unnecessary branches and delete those factories.

Everything's moving into the delivery area, riiiiight there
at the left of this screenshot.

You can unlock all the achievements by reaching Level 30 and upgrading all the buildings to Level 8. I've done both, so I personally consider to have beaten this game. It’s a fun challenge to figure out how to reach all the numbers that are requested. Really, this game is all mathematics, so it’s going to appeal to nerds like me and other folks who like crunching numbers, but may not be for fans of more classic factory-building games. I suggest playing with the PC’s calculator open, and maybe the factors calculator in a window. One of the bigger issues is just how many of each number is needed to go up a level or upgrade a facility; it eventually turns into a waiting game when you can’t produce them faster and need to wait for those quantities to tick up. The other option is to repeat your factories wherever possible to produce more of one specific number per second. But overall, yeah, it's a fun one.

…Okay, I’ve made exponentially more math puns here than usual.

Beltmatic is currently available on Steam for 6.99$ USD.

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Platinum!

Spend a lot of money to install your coasters! And make sure
your peeps pay through the nose to ride it, too - or else,
how will you make that money back?

Sometimes, you buy a game just because of one feature you really want to try out. I can’t say I wasn’t ever guilty of that, and in fact, I can think of quite a few games I bought just because I was intrigued about one thing I wished to test! Today’s game, for which the version I'm covering is no longer available on Steam, is one of those. The RollerCoaster Tycoon (RCT) games were a creation first of Chris Sawyer and later of Frontier Developments released from 1999 to 2004, and yet all of them were great examples of what computers could achieve at the time, even if some of them used interesting game dev magic to function. RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 was first released in 2004. It’s available on Steam under the name Complete Edition, which was released to online stores in 2020; but what I own is the Platinum! edition, which was pulled from online retailers in 2017 due to an ongoing lawsuit between Atari and Frontier. And, well, after Complete’s release, there's no need to bring it back.

I’ll review the version I have. This version includes expansion packs: Soaked!, which focuses on waterparks, and Wild!, which favors animal exhibits and shows. Let's manage some parks!

The Peeps are Back

Always gotta think of entrances, exits, and paths towards
both anytime you place a new attraction.

The core concept of RollerCoaster Tycoon is to manage amusement parks with different objectives. You may be asked to have a certain number of guests in your park, or to hit a certain park value; other times, you  tend to VIP guests and must satisfy them before they leave. The Peeps are as funny – and numerous! – as ever. But, I must be honest here, there is exactly ONE reason why I bought this game when I already owned RCT1: In 3, you can use the camera to get aboard the rides and roller coasters you place around your park, giving you a first-person view of all the excitement. So, as you can imagine, my first instinct when booting up this one was to go into Sandbox Mode and create everything I could, just to experience it myself right afterwards. That alone was worth the price.

Descending soon... WHEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHH!

Clint Bushton: Coaster amateur, ex-president, likes women
named Monica. All similarities with persons living or
dead, yadda yadda.

But! There’s still a game behind all this! 18 scenarios in the classic package, and an extra 21 (9 in Soaked!, 12 in Wild!) across both expansions, for a total of 39. All of them have objectives split in three ranks: Apprentice, Entrepreneur and Tycoon. You can’t move on to the next rank until you’ve finished every mission of the current one. On early scenarios, the later rank missions are just extensions of previous ones (ex. Have 450+ guests in your park for two months on Entrepreneur, when one request in Apprentice demanded 300+ guests for one month).

Exploring The Itch.io Collection #3

Even more of this! I promise, it's the last one this month. With this article, we've reached the games that can be finished in 10 minutes.

Experiences

Just kids becoming friends, regardless of species.

Summer Gems: Two young kids, one human girl and one frog, meet on the seaside beach. They share gifts, your character writes to the other, then receives the response. It’s cute, raises a good point about environmentalism, but stops at showing this budding, momentary friendship over three scenes.

Arigatou, Ningen-San!: In this game partly developed by USC Games (of WereCleaner fame), you just arrived in the neighborhood and are tasked by a bird to befriend all the local animals… by petting the Heck out of them with the mouse. No real goal past that, and the only funny thing to this one is how the animals get squished as you “pet” them.

Dawndusk Dream Sewer: In this isometric experience, your character is going down some dream sewers and speaking to the people trapped within. All the way down to some sort of chaotic deity. I didn’t feel much for the esoteric, absurdist discussions in there.

Miles of endless corridors, and not a single bathroom in sight.

Hotel Paradise: Look for your room in a seemingly endless hotel. There is no rhyme or reason as to where the rooms are located, so don’t try to figure it out with logic. Just keep walking through the halls until you finally spot your room number. Apparently, each number is completely personal, no other player will have it (though considering there’s a maximum of 999 rooms, I personally doubt that statement). Very basic gameplay, intriguing concept (and finding your room WILL take a while), but this game doesn’t offer a lot else.

No Wheels Racing: A parody game about a race where none of the cars have wheels. Pick a driver! Pick a car! (There’s only one.) Pick whether you want wheels (not available) or no wheels! Then, it’s off to the races, and all you can do is stay in place, honk, or press Escape to get disqualified! …Yeah, it’s just a quick joke, especially with the build-up to the “race” or how racers honk their horns louder the longer you wait. Silly thing.

And then, of course, judgment gets passed on what you've
made of Heaven based on which folks you've let through.

The Political Compass: Devil’s Labyrinth: A visual novel in which you’re the new hire who must choose whether to send souls to Heaven or to Hell… the latter, with EVISCERATION! The “practice souls” you get are all a bunch of exaggerated stereotypes: The crypto bro, the ultra-rich, the app developer, the reality TV watcher, y’know. Guess the game tries to be comedic, but I didn’t feel like it was particularly funny, and any commentary felt wasted.

for|rest: In this walking simulator, you visit a completely grey, lifeless forest. You can click the mouse button to wave your hand at transparent thorny vines to make them disappear, which causes colors, plants and fauna to reappear in the area. Sometimes, though, a girl may appear instead… can you hear her story? While I appreciate the concept, I think I missed out on the ending because at some point I could no longer find any vines to erase, and so I was seemingly stuck. It’s a good and meaningful idea presented in a very artistic (if low-poly) manner.

All things you can do with ropes and little spheres.
Hey, that's creative!

Il filo conduttore: Italian for “the common thread”. In this experience, all you can do involves strings and little balls. Activate things, make music, see what odd interactions happen. Every scene is something different. You could be excused for thinking most of this was done with live-action objects. Nice little thing, good for at least one playthrough.

Otherside: Is supposed to be a trippy, puzzle-based experience with psychedelic visuals (the page describes it as Myst meets the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey), but I tried playing it thrice and each time, I either got stuck because puzzles were unclear, or a new screen just failed to load (with no way to leave using, say, the Esc key). Ain’t trying it again, nope. Hard pass.

Not sure what this machine is supposed to be, but...
it's all very ominous.

please: A horror/environmental storytelling game in which you are the repairman in a building in an odd… place and setting, is the best I can say. You’re asked to “please” repair stuff downstairs, always machinery that's left unexplained. We never quite know what’s going on, but we do hear sounds by the doors, and we’re left wondering. The ending doesn’t help either, mking things even more ambiguous. Sound design’s great here, graphics are low-res 3D but work great for the desired effect. Recommended!

Conversations With My Anxiety: A visual novel in which the player is on their first date with a woman named Gina, and the date isn’t going entirely as planned; thus, the player’s anxiety butts in to make things more difficult, especially to weigh in on what’s going on. You always have the option to let anxiety win, but there are different bits of text to read depending on which option you select. Accurate depiction of living with anxiety. I bet there’s quite a few possible endings, too. Do check that one, I liked it.

I'm too honest, my response would be "it's a first date, of
course I am." But I'd still have hope the date goes well.

Self-care

Take your time - I know I'll need some time myself to
write down what I want to leave behind.

little boats of farewell: A point-and-click story in which a ghost participates in the ritual of leaving paper boats to float down the river at the end of the year with what the memories they want to leave behind. Along the way, you can talk to the others there, hear what they’re willingly forgetting on the dawn of the new year. You can even pick things off the ground to decorate your boat. At the end, once you’re ready to let your paper boat go, you’re encouraged to write down your own message. Feels therapeutic. For a 10-minute game, this touched me more than I thought it would.

Social reach

A HerpWitch and their weird little critter.
No matter which one it will end up being.

To Be A HerpWitch: A riff on Pokémon created for a Nonbinary Game Jam, you play a nonbinary character who dreams of becoming a HerpWitch, AKA a trainer of Familizards. They are first seen dreaming of the classic “boy or girl?” question from early Pokémon, choosing neither. They get ready for work, then head out. They weren’t set to get their own Familizard, but an unlikely twist of fate leads to them getting one regardless. It’s cute, and I get that it’s short because it was for a game jam, but it does leave one wishing there was more.

down.: Self-described as “a short, somber atmospheric experience about depression, anxiety and the inability to forgive oneself”, this game is just the character walking towards the right and finding notes from her own mind that belittle her and push her to suicide. …I get the point, dealing with those thoughts is rough, but there's almost nothing to gameplay, nothing to interact with, so it feels otherwise uninspired. Maybe don’t play that one if you’re already struggling on that front.

Misophonia is decreased tolerance to certain sounds or what
causes them, hence why the character is struggling to
get past someone blowing their nose.

Escort Yourself Out: An autobiographical game about suffering from eating disorders, anxiety attacks, misophonia, and other trauma-born issues, and learning to live with them. The author made this game for a university thesis, and most of the game is a discussion on her part about how these issues affect her day-to-day life and her studies. The more game-like portions are the author escorting her younger self across a busy store, and you hold down a key to offer comforting words to help her get through all these encounters.

Plain games

Beat that evil witch! You can do it! Good boys!
You're gonna get treats if you win!

Dogs Throwing Swords II: Three Barks To The Wind: A shmup with a clever concept. Three dogs are chosen to fight the witch that has corrupted the woods and the desert. Each dog has a type of attack, the three go through the stage as a group, and you can change their position with Left-shift or their order with Left-Ctrl. Each doggo has their own health, which depletes when they’re hit specifically. Two worlds of two levels each, and two boss fights. With its 16-bit look, this game is adorable. And fun, too! Makes me wish there was more of it.

Bunflower: A Game Boy Color-style game in which your player bunny must collect three pieces of food (namely, plants) before a blizzard hits. You obtain them by helping people around bunny town. It’s super easy, but neat and just the kind of game you could give a kid that’s starting their journey in gaming.

Well, I need food! Just watch me, I'll be back
before the storm. Promise!

Filing this one under "disappointments". Might have
enjoyed, if it didn't bazoo-krash constantly.

Bazookrash: ACAB, am I right? Morlando the bear wants to sleep, but the damn sirens in the distance keep him up. Time to grab the firearms and unleash Hell on the night noise. First-person shooter, aim for the pink cars, leave the civilian blue ones alone. You have a rifle, a gauss and a bazooka. Decent idea and concept, it could have been fun, but the damn thing kept crashing on me.

Stophat: You play as a rich jerk’s hat and must try to land on your owner’s head as many times as possible, though he will start moving to avoid you. A and D to move left and right, S to descend. As another quickly-made GameJam entry, this is as basic as it gets, but… yeah, feels rather meh.

It's got the basics, so there could be a larger game
in the same genre made by the same person someday.

Gigabit: In this 2.5D platformer made in 16 days for a Halloween game jam, you play as a little robot who has to get through six stages with Halloween theming. Each time the robot hits the floor or a wall, little debris come flying out. If you get stuck, hit R to restart the level. Move with A/D or the arrows, jump with W, Up or Space. While enjoyable, it does feel like someone’s first attempt at 2.5D platforming, as some platforms aren’t defined well and there are slight issues with lighting that make some threats hard to spot. But it’s a commendable product, especially if made in this short a timeframe.

INDECT: A platform game about a cyberpunk future. Or, rather, a demo for such a game, as it only contains a tutorial and two levels, the second of which already ramps up the difficulty. Your character can move with the arrows, jump with Space and shoot with alt. Not a lot to get immersed, though it looks promising. Notably, in the second level, new enemies appear when backtracking over a path that didn’t have them before. Unfortunately, the project is on hiatus.

Nigel: A game that homages Nigel the gannet, a real bird with quite the history. You play as Nigel, who becomes a matchmaker for the couples of animals on Mana Island, solving simple puzzles to make them meet. After solving all the puzzles, Nigel gets to pick a partner of his own... a concrete bird statue. Very easy to finish, but it’s the thought that counts.

Now, how to get the two kiwis together...
Kiwi! Kiwi, c'm'ere! There's another kiwi for you!

She's gonna have her step count through the roof
once this night is over.

Night in the Storm: Help Vera the lighthouse keeper seagull through the night in a very faulty lighthouse. Gotta keep the boats safe! Close the window so the bottom floor won’t flood and short-circuit the generator, change the lightbulb every time one burns out, and repair the engine that rotates the light when it also stops. It’s a stressful stormy night! This one is fun, and I thought it was a good thing that you could zoom out to see the whole place at once to keep track of what you must work on. Great-looking sprite art, too.

We're so devoted to the job, we'll even try selling to your dog!

This Call May Be Recorded: You’re a new telemarketer/scam caller annoying people over the phone. Gameplay is split in two parts. The first part has you click the “Stop” button and trying to land into the blue areas over a green bar. The more successful hits you get, the more annoying your pitch is to the person called. They respond with spite, and the second part has you blocking the words from your ears by clicking where they’re coming from: Up, down, left or right. Five callees, with an increasing difficulty level. The last one is GREAT. Loved that game.

A spider in the bathroom. Someone sampling the
wines for free. The homeless guy at the door.
Truly, even for monsters, retail is Hell.

Vampire Night Shift: Designed to also work on Game Boy emulators. You play a vampire who works a night shift at a store. Help the rude customers, stock the shelves, and deal with other supernatural events. Your boss tells you early on to do everything to avoid getting fired, but that never comes up again, as far as I know – though I do suspect some events can happen differently based on your actions. Fun one, I liked it. I love the GB aesthetic, it’s cozy nostalgia.

Akuto: Showdown (formerly, Akuto: Mad World): An isometric multiplayer game (with extra options for single player) where your character must kill every other character in the arena. You can move in eight directions, throw your sword at opponents and NPC enemies alike, try to kill more than you get killed. There seems to be a whole bunch of different environments to fight in, and hazards to encounter, but I lost interest real fast when the NPC and hazards turned out too good against the player.

There's chonk, then there's C H O N K.

Fat Bear Week: A bear awakens for the yearly bingeing before going back to sleep. The bear starts off normal, but after eating enough it’ll turn round and roll around the stage to eat, then keep growing as it eats more. Each stage has a special flower hidden in it, and keeps track of how many of each kind of edible item you caught. There are five bears available, the last of which is unlocked only by eating everything in each of the three stages. This is harmless and easy enough, and I could see this as a quick game for younger kids.

Laser Paddles: Pong, with powerups and lasers! And by lasers, I mean it; the CPU paddle is programmed to shoot as soon as it can, tearing holes into yours. There are lots of powerups on the screen, and those cause balls to bounce around the screen with various effects. There are multiple balls, but all that matters is which side the last ball gets through. Tons of modes that switch up gameplay, possibility for multiplayer, etc. It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s exactly what it set out to do, so it’s fine.

This game gets hard fast, AND both the bounce mechanics
and hitboxes are kinda wonky. Nothing to help our pumpkin...

Pumpking: A platformer in which you control a pumpkin along a lengthy continuous stage still split into levels for simplicity. Stomp on opponents, or jump even higher by bouncing on their heads; collect coins, extra hearts, and later down the line, look for keys to unlock the path going down. Nothing too groundbreaking, just a decent quick thing with a Halloween theme. Though I did think the bouncing ability was hit or miss, and that some sections were a little cheap here and there.

And... that's all for now! Might not seem like much, but over three articles, I covered exactly 80 games. Proper long reviews will be coming up soon!

Exploring The Itch.io Collection #1

In my 2024 Retrospective at the start of the year, I stated that I had been meaning to explore the massive collection of stuff I had gathered on my itch.io account. Twice in the past, I contributed to causes by purchasing two large bundles of indie items on the platform. The result? Oh, last I counted, I had something like 2,500 items on there.

No, I didn't stutter. I know. That’s a ton.

Want to track my progress? I make sure to update the list
of tested games as I play them. You can view it here.

Itch.io is a space specifically dedicated to indie games, and plenty are on the short end. I have a bit of overlap between that collection and everything I currently own, or have owned, on Steam; when I checked, I had 23 repeats, some of which are still waiting in the Steam backlog. These bundles also included: Loads and loads of physical/board games (a category in which we can find solo journaling games and other stuff like that), tools/resources, books/novels/comics, and even a handful of apps. With the sheer number of items I had, it was tough to sort it all into categories that would make it easier for me to find stuff.

Late in 2024, I decided I’d do the exercise I do for my Steam collection, and organized the games I could find with recorded times on HowLongToBeat into a single list. I only really found, oh, 50% maybe? The end list was still something like 830 games, which means I have roughly double that to check out. Welp, I’m nowhere near done! Though what helps is that, compared to what remains of my main collection, a sizeable chunk of those games (around 350) will take me under an hour to finish. Hell, I've got plenty that can be finished in under twenty minutes.

This is only a tiny portion of what I have yet to cover. This
specific personally-curated collection, at time of posting,
still has over 300 games. Even at 20 minutes a pop,
that's 100 hours.

At some point eventually, I might trade out the Quick Reviews of Steam games for Quick Reviews of itch.io games instead, where I could very easily cover short games for several months. (I might also have segments like that for games on the Nintendo Switch Online, but I’ll see about those later.)

For the sake of completionism, I figured I would give every game its moment. What to do with games that can be finished in 1 to 10 minutes? Well, just one paragraph should do, right? Down here is my first list of games from itch.io, all of which are so short they can be finished faster than it takes to listen to the radio edit of an average song. How many am I covering? Well… in this article alone, there’s 29.

To make it a little easier on myself and everyone, I decided to split these games into categories to cover them here. Some register more like experiences than proper games, some exist to encourage self-care, some are inspired by a social situation and/or try to discuss something important, and some are just plain fun.

Experiences

Look out for scattered boxes.

Guide of the Butterfly: An atmospheric black and grey game about a butterfly reaching the end while an EKG beeps and peters out, signaling death. Meant to be powerful, but felt too short for the message.

He Plays the Piano: Keep pressing keys to keep the music going. Ambient, not quite a game. Nice but not too noteworthy.

Hope’s Peak: A Western story delivered 5 paragraphs at a time, with playthroughs randomized based on the words you can choose on each screen. If you want the full story, find all the words. However, you don’t have a way to know whether you’re making progress.

Still not sure how bringing random items to it appeases
the ghost. Especially stuff that could have hurt it.

Peace of Mind: Your new house is haunted! The start screen tells you what the ghost likes. Bring it three items representing what it likes, picked around the house, and… that’s all. To grab items, they must be at the center of the screen, and you have no cursor to help you there, so it's a bit user-unfriendly. Only a concept, at best.

Wave to the people: Hold down the mouse button to wave to people and see their reaction. Nothing more. Barely a game, but it’s cute.

Monad: Create dots of black and white over a black background. Those will get larger and larger before disappearing. The result is a tapestry of circles meshing for fun visuals. You can control the speed at which the circles disappear. That’s about it for this more meditative entry.

Are we sure the snacks the mayor gave us didn't
contain any psychotropes? ...No? ...Have we checked?

Mr mayor tells your fortune recounts a story and offers you snacks: The talk screens, the drawn cards, the story beats and the “snack” are randomized, so you never know what Mr mayor is going to say or do. It’s a zany “game” without a goal, but its sheer absurdity makes it endearing. The “story” never makes sense. Thanks for the fortune!

The Spark of One: Based on a Martin Luther King speech, the idea here is all about the strength in numbers. Move around, attract one type of particles by holding down Space; carry them all to the exit, and you get zapped; on round 2, all the particles will be attracted to your square, and it’s only then that you can go through. …That’s all.

Emptiness, and then one low-effort jumpscare. Meh?

Eizoku: A very short horror game put on hiatus by its creator. A low-poly environmental narrative game with just one scare at the very end, and lots of walking on bridges. There’s probably more surprises to it than I’ve seen, if the screenshots are any indication, but I was left with the impression that the current product was bland.

The Alabaster Donut Farm: In this environmental narrative game, you visit a “donut farm” in the middle of a desert. Interacting with numbered items leads to unconnected freeform poems. Hard to tell whether there even is a plot here, though the game does end after you find what looks like a spaceship in the distance. This one didn’t leave much of an impression on me.

Self-care

Thanks Borb!

Borb the Birb: Self-care, one advice screen at a time, with a funny round bird mascot. Not quite a game, but could be useful to some.

Kintsugi: A game about embracing imperfections, inspired by the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics using gold. Soothing music, Japanese proverbs, a short but relaxing experience.

A Lullaby of Colors: Move around an endless land of colors, while enjoying relaxing music. You can often crash into bouncing balls, which will change the layout of the land and the patterns of colors on the ground. Made for both PC and VR, this game doesn’t offer much of interest.

Social reach (Heavy topics ahead)

Not if you keep saying gibberish, I'm afraid.

I Hurt Myself – Postjam Edition: A rough game about suicidal ideation. You move around, grab a knife, and metaphorically end it. Oof. I hope the maker of this one is doing better.

Just one, must choose: Pick one of the five colors. Only one. Then, the game tells you to think about the ones you didn’t choose, using them as a metaphor for any other thing in life that is “not chosen”, and thus ignored. I get it, but eh.

Life: The Game of Chance: A game about how much about life is up to luck, from where you’re born to the chances presented to you. The are no happy endings to be found in this game, to emphasize that everyone else has it rough too, and you should empathize with the life stories of even complete strangers. (Not gonna lie, after the past few years, that lesson feels sour, considering how often people make choices specifically to make the lives of others more difficult.)

Saving You from Yourself: A quick visual novel-style game about being a therapist for transgender people. Though you don’t frequently have options to pick from, you do get to see what your questions and comments have as an impact on the trans woman your character discusses with. Thoughtful and important.

Lacrymo Tennis 2016/18: During a massive protest in France, you’re a tennis player tossing tear gas canisters back at the riot squads… at least until your lungs give up. Move with the mouse, click to swing back. Try to let as many protesters as possible through. Funny, maybe, but that's the only joke here.

Masks: Inspired by the 2019 Hong Kong protests, this text adventure is about a courier trapped in a lab as chaos erupts. Their only choice for survival may be what is found in the package they carried. Playthroughs change a little based on choices, but the more interesting part is how some text changes when you click a clickable word to highlight the gravity of the situation (ex. the word changes to something more dire).

Just plain games

Oh, and the track shape is randomized.

Hair Dash: Use two buttons to attack left or right, fend the waves of enemies. Looks nice, but is very short.

Bouncy Cars: The track is too narrow, hitting the “walls” hurts the car, and the cars turn way too fast. Hard pass.

Bear-ly There: It’s summer, time for Barris the Bear to eat a lot of fish and be full in time for the next winter! Would be fun, if Barris did move with WASD – but instead, he only ever moved when I jumped! And he moved like a ragdoll! Good thing this was short, because it was so annoying I didn’t want to play it any longer. Oh, there’s also a “poop” button.

It's not anywhere near as fun as it looks.

More bunnies in one picture means more points!

I’m Bored, Let’s Explore (Mall): Low-pixel short adventure of two friends exploring a deserted mall. Some funny comments. Not a ton to do, but it’s alright.

#hasicontent: Take pictures of bunnies in a field! Your pictures get Likes, and at every 100 Likes, you get carrots to attract more bunnies. That’s all there is to this cute game; no goal otherwise, though it’s fun to see bunnies get more and more frequent over time.

Hi-Score Boi: A gamer practicing high scores in his living room. Two modes: Endless, or go for the highest score in one minute. What’s gameplay? Pressing Space to score 1,000 points. That’s it. Sparks fly from the screen, even more if you button-mash fast, 1,000 points, that’s all. Looks nice, but it’s just bleh.

Why did the tree cross the neighborhood?

OddyTree: You are a tree seeking greener pastures, but a town was built between your forest and the one up North. It's gonna be a trip across homes and fences. You move with WASD and must rebalance yourself with the arrow keys. If you fall completely to the ground, you lose and must restart. This is the basis of quite a few mini-games I’ve played before, and here, it’s done well.

PizzaBoy: You deliver pizzas to people. You move with WASD, jump with Space, and throw your pizza slices with the left- and right-click buttons. You can often discover new toppings by meeting specific NPCs. Hard to tell whether there really is a goal here; it seems to go on forever with no indication of progress. It’s just a silly, wacky thing for the Heck of it. Which is fine sometimes.

Find the cat in every room! He hides very cleverly.

[SIBERIA]: A text adventure mimicking CRT screens, in which you play a character who has crash-landed in Siberia and must survive the elements. With some luck and clever use of what you find, you can make your way to safety. I liked this one, it’s very short, but it’s enjoyable and has a bit of self-awareness.

Where is Cat?: One of my favorite discoveries today, in this game for children you have to find numerous animals and items in seven rooms of a house. First a cat; then tiny plates, tiny glasses, tiny cupcakes, and finally, mice that will eat the cupcakes. All of this is done in an adorable art style. It’s not super difficult, which is understandable, and like everything else here it’s short, but it’s clever and well-made.

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That was a lot, wasn’t it? Yeah, that’s a lot of games in very little time. Keep in mind that I also had to remove each of these from my collections on itch.io, keeping track of what I’ve covered and what I haven’t. It’s long work! This one article represented barely 1% of all the products I have on there, and yet I haven’t even played for two hours total. I hope to do more of these in the future. I might cut down more and more on the number of games I cover within one article, as the games get longer, and I have more to say about each.

Well then, I guess I’ll be seeing you in the next article like this. There’s a reason I called it #1 – it’s not the last.