Introduction

Tightly-packed, short-but-sweet experiences are the bread and butter of indie gaming, with titles like A Short Hike and Minit proving that you don't have to make the next Grand Theft Auto with 100+ hours of content to make a solid game.

Enter the first-ever Short Games Showcase, a Steam event created by veteran game developer Ogre Pixel. The showcase, featuring a total of 175 demos, discounted games, and new releases, is open to games with one to four hours of content. As a poor person myself, the free demos interested me the most. So, I tried out a few, and, in this article, I'll share my thoughts on them!

A Tiny Sticker Tale

A Tiny Sticker Tale, developed by Ogre Pixel, the organizer of the Short Games Showcase itself, is an adorable journey where you play as Flynn, a donkey who sets out to save the world using his magical sticker album.

The game's core mechanic is REALLY interesting to me, you can pick up nearly ANYTHING you encounter, and store it in your sticker album. Then, you can walk around to other locations and stick it down to bring it back to life and solve puzzles! The mechanics remind me of Paper Mario: Sticker Star and the recently-released The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

What's really funny to me is that even the NPC's are able to be sticker-napped. Usually in games, these characters are static, unchanging sprites that offer the same few lines of text over and over again. However, in A Tiny Sticker Tale, you get to take them on the adventure with you, willingly or not!

It also goes without saying that the game is simply beautiful to look at. The character designs are cute, the world is colorful and stylistically simple, and the animations are sleek and snappy. The music is similarly pleasant, with cheerful acoustic tracks setting the scene for your adhesive adventures. 

A Tiny Sticker Tale definitely sticks true to its name, with the demo only taking about 15 minutes for me to complete, and gamers online reporting that the full experience clocks in at about two hours. I get that the point of the game is to be short, but with as cool of a game mechanic as picking up and sticking down literally everything is, I can't help but whine that there should be more. A lot more!

However, my biggest complaint with the game is the writing. Who is Flynn, anyway, and how did he get this magical sticker album in the first place? What are his motivations to even do anything, and why do the NPC's in-game act like his dimension-breaking power is a totally normal part of society? Moreover, (though this is more of a nitpick) there were quite a few grammatical inconsistencies in the text of the game: sometimes sentences would end with punctuation, and sometimes they wouldn't!

Nonetheless, I enjoyed my playthrough of A Tiny Sticker Tale's demo, and I'm genuinely excited to see how the full game, which is out now on Steam and Nintendo Switch, explores the concept of collecting and putting back down the world one sticker at a time!

Fishlike

Fishlike, developed by John Jilsen, puts a fishy spin on the classic WarioWare-style microgame formula. The full game, available now on Steam, contains over 120 microgames themed around fishes, fishing, and anything else below sea level!

The game sees you progressing through 8 main levels that each have their own unique theming and ultra-hard boss stages. You have just four lives to make it to the end, so try to win as many of the microgames as possible!

The fast-paced nature of Fishlike kept me on my fins the entire time, all the while I was smiling at the voice clips included here and there that give the game an authentic, quirky charm.

However, as enjoyable as some of the microgames were, just as many, if not more, seemed unfair or confusing. Numerous times I'd be dropped into a game that I had no idea how to control, and I'd lose before I even got the chance to understand what happened. Worse still, some games are only playable with the keyboard, whereas others rely entirely on the mouse. Switching between these two control schemes so quickly, especially without telling the player which one to use first, led to even more losses that just felt cheap.

The game attempts to rectify this problem with a practice mode that lets you play any microgame of your choosing as much as you want. The practice mode is helpful, and I'm grateful that it's included, but it still doesn't do much to prevent me from wasting half of my time each microgame figuring out which buttons to hold down first, let alone how to win. This wasn't a problem I ever had with the WarioWare games.

The game attempts to rectify this problem with a practice mode that lets you play any microgame of your choosing as much as you want. The practice mode is helpful, and I'm grateful that it's included, but it still doesn't do much to prevent me from wasting half of my time each microgame figuring out which buttons to hold down first, let alone how to win. This wasn't a problem I ever encountered with the WarioWare games.

Additionally, though this may be nitpicking again, I'm not too much a fan of the game's art style. When done well, pixel art can be done REALLY well. However, in Fishlike, I think a few important improvements need to be made. For one, the game doesn't stick to a consistent pixel size. Just in the above screenshot, you can tell that the pixels for the bomb, the number text, the fish and fishhook, and the top-left directional icons are all different sizes, leading to a jarring, out-of-place feel.

I don't think the game sticks to a consistent color palette, either, with every game and icon having their own hues. This leads to some color combinations that are quite displeasing to the eye, like the mix of pale olive-colored grass with dark cyan-colored water in the boating screenshot.

Despite being a little fishy at times, Fishlike still scratches that WarioWare urge on Steam. If you're looking for a short, fast-paced arcade-style experience, this is the game for you. (and it's literally microgames, how much shorter could you get than that?)

Penarium

Penarium, developed by Self Made Miracle, is a nearly 10 year-old game that I was surprised to see in the Short Games Showcase. The game stars Willy, a performer trapped in a weirdly bloodthirsty circus. He'll have to survive barbaric death traps in the arena while simultaneously entertaining the crowd!

The game is insanely difficult, but not in a frustrating way. It always made me laugh to see poor Willy explode into a jumble of red pixels each time he succumbed to one of the ringmaster's ridiculously brutal traps.

The demo contains a total of 10 challenges, which task Willy with performing a variety of stunts, from smashing barrels and popping balloons to basking in spotlights and even brewing dark magic potions - sometimes while underwater! (hope they have good insurance...)

I thoroughly enjoyed each bite-sized challenge the game put me through, at least, the ones I was able to complete! If you'd like to have a go at Penarium and see if you can survive the sadistic circus, you can buy the game now on Steam, as well as on PlayStation and Xbox.

Conclusion

Though the titles featured in the Short Games Showcase may be tiny, they certainly aren't puny! Whether you're looking to put your puzzle-solving brains to the test in A Tiny Sticker Tale, hone your reaction time and quick-thinking in Fishlike, or simply see how many weapons of mass destruction it takes to kill an ordinary guy in Penarium, you'll find that these small experiences can be nothing short of incredible.

The Short Games Showcase is ending soon, so if you'd like to get in on any last-minute deals while they're still around, now's your chance! You can view the full page of all participating games here. Life's too short to not give these amazing games a shot!