Best Short Games on Steam
Games designed to be finished quickly or enjoyed in compact sessions.
Browse all Short →
1Portal - Portal™ is a new single player game from Valve. Set in the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories, Portal has been called one of the most innovative new games on the horizon and will offer gamers hours of unique gameplay.
Oct 10, 2007
In this game, you can…
- fall into a portal to build speed, then explode out the other across impossible gaps.
- watch a simple cube become a lifesaver when it blocks a deadly energy ball for you.
- solve fights without shooting by redirecting enemies and danger through portals and props.
- place a blue portal and an orange portal to make an instant entrance and exit.
- use portals to turn a drop into a slingshot, launch onto a ledge, grab a cube midair, and land on a button before a hazard triggers.
- hear an AI narrate and taunt you the whole time, like the facility is watching and lying.
- tip over a turret that looked terrifying and it just collapses and stops.
- rip pieces off the final boss, carry each one to an incinerator, and repeat the cycle three times to finish it.
2Little Nightmares - Take on the role of Six, a lone child lost in a massive metal vessel known as the Maw, surrounded by dangerous, distorted versions of adults. You’ll need to do your best to escape in one piece or your fate will be worse than you ever dared dream.
Apr 27, 2017
In this game, you can…
- solve puzzles by using the ship's machinery, like making a rope of sausages to swing across a gap.
- find tiny Nomes hiding in the dark and hug them like strange little companions.
- slip through child-sized passageways the adults can't fit into.
- hold your breath behind cover while a monster walks past your hiding spot.
- turn a careful sneak into a sudden sprint-and-climb escape when you get spotted.
- sneak around a pursuer with absurdly long arms that can grab you from far away.
- wake up with only a lighter, then navigate the Maw with no dialogue and almost no guidance.
- use boxes, keys, and levers to improvise a path upward while monsters patrol nearby.
3Firewatch - Firewatch is a single-player first-person mystery set in the Wyoming wilderness, where your only emotional lifeline is the person on the other end of a handheld radio.
Feb 9, 2016
In this game, you can…
- walk into a remote research outpost and find transcripts of your private radio conversations already written down.
- follow a strange lake signal to a hidden site, get knocked out, and wake up to a mystery that suddenly feels personal.
- start by making life-defining choices in a text-only prologue before you ever step into the woods.
- live alone in a lookout tower and build your only relationship through a handheld radio.
- navigate a massive wilderness with just a map and compass, using landmarks like you're actually hiking.
- inspect random objects you find and radio them in to spark custom conversations that change the tone between you two.
- arrive at that research site and then watch it burn, leaving you wondering if you're being set up for the fires.
- spend hours expecting a huge conspiracy payoff, then end on a short, awkward goodbye and a straight evacuation.
4To the Moon - A story-driven experience about two doctors traversing backwards through a dying man's memories to artificially fulfill his last wish.
Sep 7, 2012
In this game, you can…
- rewrite a man's memories so his final wish feels fulfilled in his last conscious moments.
- start at a patient's deathbed and work backward through his past, memory by memory, until the real story clicks.
- dive into a dying man's memories and rebuild them into a new life.
- hunt down a key memento in each scene, then solve a small tile-flip puzzle to unlock the next memory jump.
- piece together a romance in reverse, watching a relationship's end before you learn how it began.
- notice tiny throwaway details in dialogue and objects that later snap into major reveals.
- walk through memory-anchored places like a carnival, a library, and a childhood home, each tied to a different turning point.
- watch two doctors argue, joke, and make hard calls while they race against their patient's failing time.
5LIMBO - Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters LIMBO
Aug 2, 2011
In this game, you can…
- drag a corpse into water so it bloats into a stepping stone.
- tear off a giant spider's leg, then use its body as a movable shield to block spikes and reach a ledge.
- get a brain slug attached that forces you to walk one direction until you hit a light, then it flips you back.
- flip a gravity switch and keep solving puzzles as the whole world turns upside down.
- race rising water by repositioning floating crates and other objects to build a path before you drown.
- escape humans hunting you with spears and darts while you can't fight back.
- work factory machines and navigate gears, hatches, and crushers where the environment is the puzzle.
- unlock a secret level that's almost entirely dark, then navigate by sound, light, and moving objects without any text.
6Five Nights at Freddy's - Welcome to your new summer job at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, where kids and parents alike come for entertainment and food! The main attraction is Freddy Fazbear, of course; and his two friends. They are animatronic robots, programmed to please the crowds!
Aug 19, 2014
In this game, you can…
- crank each animatronic's AI level up to 20 on Custom Night and build brutal combinations like 20/20/20/20.
- keep checking Pirate Cove to stall Foxy, or he can sprint straight down the hallway at you.
- waste too much power and lose access to your tools, leaving you staring into a dark office while Freddy approaches.
- balance your power use between camera checks, hallway lights, and two electric doors.
- watch animatronics vanish from the stage and reappear in hallways or blind spots on your cameras.
- catch a threat at the door, open up, and realize another one is already coming because you mistimed your checks.
- hear tiny off-screen cues like shuffles and childlike sounds that warn something is in the room before you can see it.
7What Remains of Edith Finch - What Remains of Edith Finch is a collection of strange tales about a family in Washington state. As Edith, you’ll explore the colossal Finch house, searching for stories as she explores her family history and tries to figure out why she's the last one in her family left alive.
Apr 24, 2017
In this game, you can…
- find a memento in someone's room and get pulled into their last day as a fully playable vignette.
- work a repetitive fish-chopping job while a tiny fantasy maze grows on-screen until you're steering a full-blown royal ceremony.
- become different animals and hunt or fly as part of someone else's story.
- crawl through secret passages inside a giant family house to reach sealed rooms and hidden doors.
- play a family story inside a comic book, with the action and visuals locked to comic panels.
- watch the game's perspective and rules change from chapter to chapter, jumping from walking to mini-games and other control styles.
- use the way you move and interact as the main storytelling device, not just the narration or cutscenes.
- open a diary family tree after each tale and mark off relatives as their stories conclude.
8The Stanley Parable - The Stanley Parable is a first person exploration game. You will play as Stanley, and you will not play as Stanley. You will follow a story, you will not follow a story. You will have a choice, you will have no choice. The game will end, the game will never end.
Oct 17, 2013
In this game, you can…
- earn an achievement for not playing the game for five years.
- glitch out of the map and have the game treat it as an intended story branch.
- get trapped in a long looping route where the narrator restarts the story about eight times.
- sit in a broom closet for ten minutes and get a full ending.
- disobey the narrator at a single fork and tumble into completely different endings and commentary.
- trigger special narrator lines by speedrunning, repeating runs, or rushing through scenes.
- walk in circles through an office until the building folds and you turn a corner into somewhere else entirely.
- finish an ending and get instantly reset to the start so you can try a new path right away.
9Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons - Guide two brothers on an epic fairy tale journey from visionary Swedish film director, Josef Fares and top-tier developer Starbreeze Studios. Control both brothers at once as you experience co-op play in single player mode, like never before.
Sep 3, 2013
In this game, you can…
- control two brothers at once with one controller, one on each stick, with separate buttons to grab, climb, and interact.
- understand every conversation even though everyone speaks gibberish, just from gestures, tone, and animation.
- reach a late-game stretch where the control scheme itself becomes the story, and the way you move your hands becomes the payoff.
- solve puzzles by splitting jobs between them, like one squeezing through bars while the other hauls a lever and holds it.
- do a rope-tied climb where one brother hangs from a ledge while the other swings across, then becomes the handhold to pull him up.
- fly on a glider and steer it using both brothers' controls to manage what each one is doing mid-ride.
- ride a boat together while you coordinate both brothers' actions, juggling steering and helping each other through hazards.
- cross a valley littered with the bodies of dead giants and keep traveling past trolls, wolves, and an invisible frost giant.
- sit both brothers on scattered benches to trigger a quiet camera pullback and just take in the landscape.
10SUPERHOT - SUPERHOT is the smash-hit FPS where time moves only when you move. No regenerating health bars. No conveniently placed ammo drops. It's you, alone, outnumbered and outgunned. Snatch weapons from fallen enemies to shoot, slice and dodge through a truly cinematic hurricane of slow-motion bullets.
Feb 25, 2016
In this game, you can…
- stand still to almost freeze time, then move an inch to make bullets start crawling again
- slice bullets out of the air with a katana
- jump into an enemy's body mid-fight to attack from their position, including setups like throwing a katana and catching it after the swap
- throw a bottle or gun to make someone flinch, watch them drop their weapon, then grab it and keep fighting
- knock someone out with a TV, catch their rifle as it falls, then use it to wipe out the next attackers
- finish a level, then watch your whole slow-motion plan replayed in real time as a clean action-movie spree
- play rule-twisting modes like katana-only, punching-only, throwables-only, or one-hit-kill that force totally different solutions through the same rooms
- dig through hidden terminals and fake file menus to uncover chat logs, secret areas, and weird extra programs
