Great idea for a post. I feel the same with games and novels.

Checkout Somerville. It has its quirks, but I loved it overall. If you’re familiar with the game Out of This World (often referred to as Another World and vice versa), you’ll probably dig it.

Another one I recommend is Planet of Lana. Lovely little story and easy gameplay. This one really grabbed me and was an enjoyable, short playthrough.

I went through a similar period. Played a handful of easy-to-pick-up short adventure games.

I’d look at Telltale-style games. They’re roughly 10 hours each ( five 2-hour ish episodes) and are almost entirely story driven. The gameplay is usually very simple. You choose dialogue choices to drive the story.

The best Telltale games are in my opinion: The Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands, The Walking Dead, Batman: The Telltale Series and its sequel, Batman: The Enemy Within. They’re also releasing the first episode of The Expanse (based on the TV show since the character Camina Drummer does not exist in the books) later this month.

Another series that is very much that same style but by different devs is the Life is Strange series. I’ve played the first one and the prequel called Before the Storm. They are very emotionally heavy stories so I’m taking some time before I can go into the sequels but I absolutely love that series and will preach it to anyone who will listen.

10 hours is definitely short but it also helps that they are all done in 2-hour episodes so you can easily take breaks.

If you like tactics games I recommend Wintermoor Tactics Club. Its funny and sweet and fits nicely in that time frame

Bastion or Transistor, both early Supergiant games.

I went on my steam profile (note these are all PC games, but some are on console) and looked at all the games I finished in under 20 hours at least once and enjoyed so I’ll just list them here. It’s in descending order from most (20.1 hours) to least (68 minutes):

I put a star next to the ones I’d recommend in a heartbeat even without the 20 hour limit.

• Mirror’s Edge ★
• The Stanley Parable ★ (although may take you at least 20 to find all endings / easter eggs / secrets)
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ★ (due to the fact that it’s the middle game in an incomplete trilogy, also recommend Deus Ex: Human Revolution but that’s more than 20)
• Hotline Miami ★
• Little Inferno
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
• Dishonored ★
• Myst
• DOOM (2016) ★
• Wolfenstein: The New Order ★
• Portals 1 & 2 ★
• Return of the Obra Dinn ★ (beat twice in 9 hours)
• Kentucky Route Zero ★
• The Henry Stickmin Collection ★
• FAR: Lone Sails
• Titanfall 2
• DUSK ★
• COD: Modern Warfare 2
• Ghostrunner (didn’t like this but it seemed most people who weren’t me did so i’m putting it here)
• Thomas Was Alone
• Jazzpunk: Director’s Cut ★
• Gunpoint ★
• Orwell
• Firewatch
• Superliminal ★
• Observer_ ★
• SUPERHOT ★
• The Beginner’s Guide
• BattleBlock Theater
• INSIDE ★
• EDGE
• Quadrilateral Cowboy
• Journey ★

edit: saw u said “story heavy” so i removed some of the arcadey ones. Some of these aren’t exactly “story heavy” depending on ur definition but they at least have a story

If you’re cool with visual novels, Doki Doki Literature Club is an incredibly interesting game, not very long. It really stuck with me.