In praise of the four-hour adventure

We tend to praise games for being long, as if hours are the same as value. Lantern Hollow made me rethink that.

It's maybe four hours end to end, and I finished it in two evenings. Not once did it feel padded. Every puzzle had a reason to exist and the story ended right when it should have.

There's a confidence in a short game that trusts its own pacing. No busywork, no artificial gates, just a clean arc from start to finish.

I'd take more games like this over another sixty-hour epic I abandon at the halfway mark. Sometimes the best thing a game can do is know when to stop.