The older you get, the more you appreciate being able to sit down with a game and finish it in a weekend. While long, 40-hour-plus adventures can be fantastic fun, not all of us have the time to dedicate to those games anymore. Maybe you just need a palette cleanser, instead. Luckily, consoles like the Nintendo Switch are packed to the brim with great indie adventures you can blast through in a weekend.
If you’re looking for something sweet and short on Switch, check out these games, all of which clock in under the 10-hour mark.
The Touryst
The Touryst is an island-hopping adventure filled with activities to do and mysteries to solve. While everything is bright and shiny in the topside world of The Touryst, there’s a whole world underneath the happy, fun-filled islands where secrets and leviathans lurk. The game is halfway between a puzzler and an RPG, with plenty to keep fans of both genres happy.
It may look cute, but this adventure hides many secrets. Enter if you dare.
Pikuniku
Pikuniku is a cutesy adventure starring a red blob that explores the sins of capitalism and the implications of over-farming on agriculture. Or it’s a cutesy platformer filled with activities, adorable creatures and hats to collect. It’s both, really — but it has such a sense of fun and excitement it’s easy to forget what a powerful message the game carries.
As you make your way through flower fields, tunnels and tree tops you’ll find yourself confronted by big questions about resource management and picking flowers. It’s a meaningful story, but it’s also excellent fun. Jump into Pikuniku if you’re looking for some funny, well-meaning humour and a hint of existentialist dread.
Paradise Killer
Paradise Killer is a murder-mystery taking place in a vast open world. Everyone has secrets in this game and their secrets have secrets, too. It’s your job as detective Lady Love Dies to determine who the mystery magic killer is, who their accomplices were and how all the pieces fit together on Island Sequence 24.
This game is filled with epic lore, fantastic dialogue and plenty to do while you’re investigating the island. While games like Arkham Asylum let you take the reigns of the “World’s Greatest Detective,” it’s Paradise Killer that really gets the investigation formula right. This is a game you’ll want to devour all at once.
Good Job!
Good Job! is a whacky puzzle game where you attempt to solve challenges in an office by throwing things, watering things, flinging things and dragging things. In each level of this game, you’re assigned a particular (usually weird) task and thrown into the deep of solving it. You won’t get much instruction, so you’ll have to use all your creativity and skills to achieve your task.
Every level is a total hit, mainly because you’ll rack up a damage bill incredibly fast and then have to try and clean up the mess you’ve caused. In short, it’s chaos — and the perfect replication of office life.
Verlet Swing
If you loved swinging in Spider-Man, you’ll love Verlet Swing. The genre of this game is hard to describe. It’s a puzzler at its heart, but the mechanics are wild.
To begin each round, you’ll be placed in a surrealist landscape filled with pizzas, dolphins and random objects. Your job is to swing past these objects and hit the goal post at the end of the level. You can adjust your swing as needed, but your momentum carries you the entire way through so you’ll need to swing in all the right places and make sure not to hit anything. It’s a big challenge, but immense fun. There’s nothing like the rush of swinging through dozens of pizzas.
Superliminal
Superliminal is a mind-bending puzzle game where perspective unlocks hidden secrets, new pathways and easter eggs. The concept is fairly simple: looking at things from far away makes them smaller, while moving them closer makes them bigger. You’ll need to master this mechanic to make your way through Superliminal but it’s oh-so-satisfying when you finally figure out how to solve your next puzzle and advance.
It’s a fairly self-contained little adventure, but one well worth the trip. Superliminal has a really unique approach to adventure-puzzlers and there’s plenty to discover in your journey.
Untitled Goose Game
At this stage, Untitled Goose Game needs no introduction. In this game, you play as a rather cantankerous goose causing havoc in an English village. You’ll need to avoid being caught, complete a list of devious obstacles and travel through each of the game’s well-planned levels.
While it’s not a particularly deep game and you can zoom through it in about two hours, it’s still an excellent adventure filled with plenty of mad honking and shenanigans. Untitled Goose Game is a joy you should experience at least once.
Baba is You
Baba Is You is a puzzle game involving clever wordplay. Basically, the game takes place in a room where words make rules. If these words are pushed together, the rules can be broken or changed. Simple facts exist in Baba Is You, for example: “Baba Is You” means you are Baba. In the above puzzle, the rules also spell out “Baba Is Wall”, so the wall is Baba, too.
But if you move the blocks to spell out “Flag is Win” and you manage to grab the flag, you win the game. It’s complex, but a great puzzler for a relaxing weekend. If you like your sudokus or crosswords, this is a game for you.
What short Nintendo Switch games have you been enjoying lately? Pop on down to the comments below and share them with your fellow Kotaku Australia readers.
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