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.

---

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.