10 best indie games you can finish in a weekend - Header image

Weekend vibes: 10 best indie games you can finish in a couple of days

Not every game needs to consume your life.

Sometimes you want an enormous RPG with several continents, 200 side quests and enough inventory management to qualify as unpaid administrative work.

Other times, you just want to begin something on Friday evening and reach the credits before Monday starts making demands again.

Shorter games are sometimes treated like lesser experiences, particularly when people insist on measuring value by dividing the price by the number of hours played. But a game does not need to occupy three months of your life to leave an impression. Some of the most memorable experiences know exactly what they want to do, do it brilliantly and then leave before the whole thing starts repeating itself.

The indie games below all offer complete, satisfying experiences that can comfortably fit into a weekend. Some are barely longer than a film. Others may require a couple of proper sessions, particularly if you enjoy wandering away from the obvious path.

This is about finishing the main experience, though. Anyone insisting on collecting every achievement, uncovering every secret and staring at every plant until it confesses may need a little longer.

Our top picks to enjoy over the weekend

A Short Hike

A Short Hike - Logo and key art

A Short Hike casts you as Claire, a young bird visiting Hawk Peak Provincial Park who needs to reach the summit to find mobile phone reception. That simple objective unfolds across a compact mountainside filled with other hikers, hidden treasures, fishing spots, climbing challenges and countless excuses to wander away from the marked trail.

There is no pressure to hurry, despite the title. You can head directly upwards and finish quickly, but the real pleasure comes from becoming distracted by everyone and everything along the way. It captures that rare holiday feeling of having nowhere urgent to be, even when you technically do have a destination. Warm, funny and quietly moving, it is the perfect game for anyone who wants their weekend adventure to feel restorative rather than exhausting.

Thank Goodness You’re Here!

Thank Goodness You’re Here! - Logo and key art

Thank Goodness You’re Here! sends a tiny travelling salesman into the fictional northern English town of Barnsworth, where almost every resident reacts to his arrival by immediately giving him another ridiculous job. It describes itself as a comedy slapformer, and much of the interaction involves walking around, hitting things and watching increasingly elaborate nonsense unfold.

It is basically an interactive collection of surreal northern comedy sketches, complete with strange shopkeepers, questionable food products and the kind of local characters who can turn a simple favour into an escalating public incident. The game understands that comedy benefits from pace. It keeps moving, keeps introducing new jokes and finishes before Barnsworth’s particular flavour of chaos has any chance of becoming normal.

INSIDE

INSIDE - Logo and key art

INSIDE follows a nameless boy through a bleak industrial world where almost everyone appears to be controlled, hunted or involved in something deeply unpleasant. Playdead tells the story with almost no dialogue, relying instead on animation, environmental detail and a steady procession of puzzles, chases and unsettling discoveries.

The game rarely wastes a moment. Every area introduces a new threat or idea, while the atmosphere steadily grows stranger without stopping to explain itself. Even after the credits, you may not be entirely sure what you have witnessed, but you will almost certainly have opinions about it. INSIDE is short enough to finish in one sitting and focused enough that doing so may be the best way to experience its descent into absolute nightmare territory.

Sayonara Wild Hearts

Sayonara Wild Hearts - Logo and key art
  • Developer: Simogo
  • Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
  • Initial release date: 19 September 2019
  • Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch
  • Weekend fit: Roughly the length of a very dramatic album

Sayonara Wild Hearts describes itself as a pop album video game, and that is probably the cleanest explanation anyone is going to get. You race motorcycles through neon cities, skateboard across impossible landscapes, fire lasers, swing swords and take part in dance battles while an original pop soundtrack pushes everything forward at 200 miles per hour.

It is brief, spectacular and absolutely determined never to stand still. Each song introduces a fresh mechanical twist before handing the spotlight to the next one, making the whole game feel like a series of lavish music videos someone accidentally made playable. You can finish the story very quickly, but chasing better scores provides a reason to put the album straight back on.

What Remains of Edith Finch

What Remains of Edith Finch - Logo and key art

What Remains of Edith Finch follows Edith as she returns to her family’s enormous, improbable home in Washington State. Each sealed bedroom contains the story of a dead relative, with every chapter using different mechanics and visual styles to explore how that person’s life came to an end.

That description makes it sound relentlessly bleak, and it certainly is not afraid of death. But the game is just as interested in memory, family mythology and the strange ways people transform tragedy into stories. Some sequences are playful, some are horrifying and at least one may continue occupying part of your brain long after the game is over. It is one of the clearest examples of a short game feeling complete rather than merely small.

Firewatch

Firewatch - Logo and key art
  • Developer: Campo Santo
  • Publisher: Panic and Campo Santo
  • Release date: 9 February 2016
  • Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch
  • Weekend fit: One long evening or two shorter sessions

Firewatch places you in the boots of Henry, a man who escapes his increasingly difficult life by taking a summer job as a fire lookout in the Wyoming wilderness. His only regular contact is Delilah, his supervisor in a distant tower, who speaks to him through a handheld radio as an unusual mystery begins unfolding around them.

The relationship between Henry and Delilah does most of the heavy lifting. Their conversations can be funny, awkward, intimate and occasionally frustrating in a way that makes both characters feel properly human. Firewatch is often beautiful to look at, but it is not really about admiring trees. It is about the stories people tell themselves when they are trying to avoid confronting the life waiting for them somewhere else.

COCOON

COCOON - Logo and key art

COCOON is a puzzle adventure built around worlds contained inside orbs. Those orbs can be carried, placed into machinery and entered as complete environments, allowing players to move between layers of reality and use entire worlds as puzzle-solving tools.

That may sound like the kind of mechanic requiring a notebook and a minor breakdown, but COCOON is remarkably good at teaching without explaining. Its puzzles steadily grow more complex while rarely becoming clogged with menus, text or unnecessary clutter. There is a real elegance to the way each new idea builds on the last, and the game finishes just as it feels like it has explored the mechanic properly rather than stretched it until nobody wants to see another orb again.

Jusant

Jusant - Logo and key art
  • Developer: Don’t Nod
  • Publisher: Don’t Nod
  • Release date: 31 October 2023
  • Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S
  • Weekend fit: Two peaceful sessions with occasional sweaty palms

Jusant is a climbing adventure about ascending an enormous tower left behind by a vanished civilisation. Players manage their stamina, place anchors and use a collection of climbing tools while exploring abandoned settlements and uncovering clues about the people who once lived there.

The climbing gives every route a physical, deliberate quality without turning the game into a punishing simulation. There is enough resistance to make reaching a ledge feel earned, but the overall journey remains meditative rather than miserable. Jusant is especially well suited to a weekend because it provides a clear destination, a satisfying sense of progress, and none of the bloated side content usually attached to games featuring very tall things.

Strange Horticulture

Strange Horticulture - Logo and key art

Strange Horticulture puts you behind the counter of an occult plant shop in the gloomy town of Undermere. Customers arrive with mysterious problems, and it is your job to identify the right plants using their appearance, scent and descriptions found within an increasingly well-used horticultural encyclopaedia. There are also witches, cults and a cat who deserves regular attention.

The pleasure comes from gradually building knowledge. A shelf full of unidentified greenery slowly becomes a familiar toolkit of dangerous, useful and occasionally murderous plants. It has the atmosphere of a cosy rainy afternoon, provided your idea of cosy includes ancient rituals and customers who may be planning something deeply sinister. It is longer than several other games here, but still compact enough to consume across a dedicated weekend.

DREDGE

DREDGE - Logo and key art

DREDGE begins as a fishing game about sailing between isolated islands, catching fish, selling them and upgrading your boat. Then darkness falls, the fog rolls in, and things with too many eyes begin appearing in places where ordinary fish should probably be. Exploring the archipelago reveals quests, unusual catches and a mystery that becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss as simple maritime superstition.

It is the longest game on this list, but its structure makes it extremely easy to lose a weekend to. Each trip is short enough to encourage one more journey before bed, while every boat upgrade opens another tempting patch of water. DREDGE understands that horror does not always need to chase you down a corridor. Sometimes it just needs to place something impossible beneath the surface and let you decide whether curiosity is worth sailing towards it.

Wrapping things up

There is something satisfying about a game that respects the ending.

These ten experiences do not expect to become permanent fixtures in your daily routine. They are not asking you to complete weekly challenges, maintain a battle pass or check back every evening because a limited-time event has added a hat.

They tell a story, explore an idea or build a particular feeling, then allow themselves to finish.

That does not make them disposable. In many cases, the shorter running time is exactly why they work. INSIDE would lose some of its tension if it wandered around for another ten hours. Thank Goodness You’re Here! would exhaust its jokes if Barnsworth became an open-world lifestyle. What Remains of Edith Finch lands because every sequence has been chosen for a reason.

And while DREDGE or Strange Horticulture may occupy most of a weekend, they still feel wonderfully manageable compared with games where reaching the ending requires annual leave and a carefully negotiated agreement with everyone else in the house.

Sometimes a weekend is all a game needs.

Start on Friday. Ignore a few sensible responsibilities. Reach the credits by Sunday.

Then spend Monday thinking about what you just played instead of wondering whether you will ever actually finish it.

Want to check out more content like this one? Head on over to our Lists section.

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