Games are only getting longer – but some creative games let you win in minutes if you know all the tricks. Here are 10 long games that you can beat in minutes.
#1 Oblivion
We’re already cheating with our very first entry. Oblivion only counts for one silly reason – you can glitch to the ending without really cheating in any way. We’re just using the tools the game provides us to beat a game that many people will play for a hundred hours or more. You can do it all right after exiting the tutorial.
Speedruns of Oblivion can be completed in minutes all thanks to the anti-gravity power of paint brushes. Paint brushes are the only item in Oblivion that aren’t subject to physics. If you drop a paint brush, it won’t fall to the ground. Instead it just floats there, and it’s got a big enough hit box that you can actually jump and stand on top of it.
Using paint brushes, you can go to the big building in the Temple District of the Imperial Capital and climb to the top. Jump down through the ceiling to land inside and you’ll find a weird door sunken in the ground behind the normal door – using it jumps you straight to the final quest in the game. You’ll need twenty or thirty paint brushes to create an invisible, floating set of stairs all the way to the top. It’s ridiculous. It’s completely unintended. But you can beat the game from the very start using this trick.
We’ll try to stick to actually intended methods for the rest of our entries. This one is so fun we had to start with it first.
#2 Devil May Cry 5
Here’s a skip only the best players will ever accomplish – a challenge that’s so tough, you’ll need to beat the game at least once and refresh if you want to be strong enough to win. There’s a hidden ending right at the start of Devil May Cry 5 that only triggers if you defeat the final boss during your first encounter. Normally you’re meant to lose this fight – and everyone that isn’t a perfect gaming god will. But technically, this challenge is possible to overcome.
At the start of DMC5, your group of heroes will face off against a new demon king called Urizen. In the Prologue, this overwhelmingly strong boss will stomp you and send you packing to play through the entire game. But if you’re very patient and very good at dodging, you can actually whittle this boss down and defeat him for a totally unique special ending. If you’re really feeling like cheating, you can also purchase the Super Character DLC which gives you access to insanely powerful characters right from the start. It’s a silly thing to do – the ending isn’t nearly as good as the real ending, but we had to try it at least once.
#3 Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye
Outer Wilds is a game that’s all about figuring out how to speedrun – basically, you’re playing for hours and hours just to figure out the exact set of steps you need to complete to get to the end as fast as possible. In this space exploration game, you have 22 minutes before the solar system is destroyed and the day is reset. You’ll need to explore every inch of the universe to figure out exactly how everything works to reach some sort of conclusion, and the spooky Echoes of the Eye DLC expands the concept outside the limits of our puny imaginations.
Set on a hidden space station that’s crumbling and changing every moment, you’ll need to solve a series of tasks so complicated that they’re essentially impossible to figure out without playing through the game for a dozen hours or more. We can barely describe all the weird stuff you need to do – and the worst part of it all? You can do it all from the very start. There’s no unlockable features stopping you from completing the space station in a single run. But you’d need a crystal ball to guess some of these steps.
Here’s one. You need to die. Yes, literally die. You need to fall through water in an insanely specific location. Then you need to put down your lantern and walk outside it – the lantern is projecting an image of a real world, but if you walk outside that light, you’ll see the wireframe reality. There are so many weird abilities you’ll need to learn in Echoes of the Eye, but it is technically possible someone could figure it all out. That’s what makes Outer Wilds feel so amazing and so fair. The mysteries of the universe are just waiting for us to solve them.
#4 Yooka-Laylee & The Impossible Lair
This one’s in the title of the game. Literally, you’re allowed to enter the Impossible Lair at the start of the game. Your entire mission is to reach the end of the Impossible Lair – and there’s a special currency you can earn to survive longer. By completing levels in the main game, you’ll collect Beetalion members that add an extra hitpoint to your total health. Even with all 48 extra hits, the Impossible Lair isn’t a cakewalk. The goal of the game is to win, and if you’re impossibly good at the Impossible Lair, it is technically possible to win with zero extra health points.
If only the Impossible Lair wasn’t so impossibly cruel. This is a gauntlet of levels that are far more challenging than anything else in the game, throwing homing missiles and precise platforming at you, overloading levels with so many chainsaws and spike traps you’ll struggle to progress even with a whole bunch of extra health. The final boss is the cherry on the pain sundae, putting the entire fight on a shifting conveyor belt as the big bee summons energy balls while zipping around the field, taking an abnormally long time for a sidescroller boss to beat. It lives up to the title, but you can technically beat the Impossible Lair in one epic 20-minute attempt. Just be prepared to practice a whole lot.
#5 Gone Home
Here’s a quick one – literally and figuratively. Gone Home was a walking simulator talking point during the early 2010s indie game boom. You walk around a house, look around at stuff, and generally explore until you find the ending credits in a specific area. If you know where to look, getting to that final room takes a couple of minutes. But it’s all about the journey, not the destination. Why even play a game like this if you’re going to speed to the exit? Well, we’re going to talk about how to do it anyway, because breaking stuff is fun.
To complete the game quickly, unlock the front door and use the secret passageway to the right of the stairs. It’s between the cabinets and the stairs. Inside this secret room, grab the Attic Key and go upstairs. Go right and down the hall, then lower the attic. Go up into the attic, follow the hallway to the green diary and read it. Viola! You’re done. That’s it. And it isn’t even the shortest game on this list.
#6 Far Cry 6
The Far Cry series has a tradition of early endings ever since including an Easter egg ending in Far Cry 4 – and each game tops the last with a different method for avoiding conflict and going home. In Far Cry 4 you’re invited into the tyrant Pagan Min’s castle. He steps away for a little bit of torture, but if you decide to stay seated you’ll be escorted back out of the country, never to join any violent rebellions.
Same goes for Far Cry 5. In the tense opening moments, if you choose to walk out of the cultist church and not arrest the insane leader, you’ll leave the area peacefully. No bloody crusade by his backwoods followers or nuclear apocalypse to spoil your day. This one is a lot more obvious, but Far Cry 6 goes in a very different direction. You can exit that game at any time, you just need a boat.
In Far Cry 6, you play as a revolutionary fighting a different kind of banana republic dictator. This military dictatorship is a whole lot richer, and your country is a whole lot closer to Miami, Florida. Instead of sticking around, you can hop on a speed boat and drive out to the edge of the map. Giving up the conflict, you’ll be treated to a cutscene where your hero rests on the beach and enjoys a sweet vacation.
#7 Mortal Shell
Here’s another weird Easter egg ending – but it’s not so easy to score as those endings in Far Cry. In this indie Dark Souls homage, you can give up the endless cycle of death and rebirth by living the good life with your new buddy; a man with a bag on his head.
Early in the game’s starting forest, you’ll find an oversized frog in a small cavern if you take the right-hand path from the spawn area. Going downriver to the swamp, you’ll find a winding path past Gorf the Frog to a lazy bandit named Baghead. If you don’t attack this guy instantly, he’ll have a lot to talk to you about. Mostly he just wants food and a good drink.
Bring him a Roasted Rat and Superior Moonshine, and he’ll offer to become your best friend forever. If you take him up on the offer, you’ll give up the quest and play an old guitar all day by the campfire while monsters overrun the forest. Hey, it’s not your problem. You don’t have to do everything, right? Sit back and enjoy an easy life with all the roasted rats you can eat.
#8 Breath of the Wild
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a very different Legend of Zelda game. Even Tears of the Kingdom is more linear – but Breath of the Wild lets you go straight for Ganon’s throat very, very quickly. You don’t need the Master Sword. You don’t need a lot of health or stamina. You can walk straight to Hyrule Castle and give Ganon a beat down from the opening moments of the game. The biggest roadblock is completing the Great Plateau, which can take experienced gamers about 20 minutes to complete. Once you’ve got your glider, Link can travel directly north to that big spooky castle.
The fields on the path to Hyrule Castle are packed with killer robots, making just approaching this area difficult. By riding the right path, Link can avoid the bots and glide to the castle itself, but climbing to the top is very tricky if you’re not prepared.
Even Link needs a few good weapons, so you’ll want to stop at the armory to collect some of the best weapons in the game. A good bow and a lot of arrows are basically required before attempting to fight Ganon, so exploration is key. Taking a winding path and avoiding all those robot turrets, we managed to make it to the Sanctum at the top. Entering the throne room, you’ll encounter all the different bosses you’ve skipped so far in a difficult gauntlet before fighting Calamity Gannon himself – a tough fight that’s challenging even if you’re fully equipped for the end game. That’s multiple different forms of boss you’ll have to beat, all at the same time, with minimum equipment. If you really want to impress your friends, try beating Breath of the Wild in less than an hour.
#9 Myst
The original game you can beat ridiculously fast if you know the right tricks – this is the game that expanded our tiny toddler brains and made us realize games were hiding secrets in plain sight. The good ending is located right at the start – in a locked safe you can open by flipping switches on the starting island. It can take literal minutes to finish one of the toughest puzzle games ever if you’re reading the tea leaves and studying the constellations for answers to the mysteries of the universe. By some miracle, if you’re clicking enough stuff for enough years, maybe you’d be able to discover this ending on your own.
Flip the eight switches on the island – there’s one simple puzzle you need to solve to reach one, but the rest are out in the open. Go back to the switch on the docks and lower the switch to get the final page. Enter the central building, squeeze into the chimney and solve the impossible puzzle on the other side. Really, it’s only impossible if you’ve done nothing else. There are squares to press and no way to know which pattern to follow this early in the game. Just do it exactly right and you’ve reached the end of the game. It literally takes two minutes if you know the secrets, but this is a puzzle game after all. This is only possible with a guide, but that’s really true of all of these endings, isn’t it?
#10 The Witness
Well, all of these endings except for one. This is one ending I believe players can absolutely discover for themselves with a little creativity. This is a game about drawing lines with your little cursor, so it’s time to draw the biggest line of all.
After completing the first set of puzzles, you’ll light up the exit gate to the first locked area. This is kind of like the tutorial zone, and once you’ve unlocked the gate a tower of light will rise up. If you stand in just the right spot, the sun in the sky lines up perfectly with this line. And that looks suspiciously similar to the puzzles you’ve been solving, doesn’t it? Draw a line from the sun all the way down to complete the biggest puzzle in the game, unlocking a path to a secret area full of messages and leading to a portal that takes you to the real developer’s office.
Games might be getting longer, but some of the weirdest games are full of weird methods to end the story early – or even end it completely if you’ve mastered every aspect of the game. There are so many others we didn’t list here like 12 Minutes, or that infamous glitch from Two Worlds – but we’ll save that deep dive for another time. Until then, let us know what your favorite early endings are in gaming. Drop us a like or subscribe if you like this video and keep checking out more. Every little bit helps.
