Back to uni? Three games that won’t eat your free time

With university starting back up, there's no more summer-long gaming marathons and a lot more assignments due and lectures to attend. If you’re a gamer who suddenly finds your free time reduced to half-hour bursts between lectures or late-night sessions after finishing assignments, you might think your backlog is doomed to gather dust. But fear no more: here are three games that don't require a month-long commitment and instead deliver satisfying gameplay in short bursts.

Super Meat Boy - an intense and challenging platformer

Super Meat Boy is a precision platformer, where you play as the titular Meat Boy rescuing his concubine Bandage Girl from the evil Dr. Fetus. The spike-studded levels are very short, averaging at about 30 seconds and very rarely exceeding a minute. One-hit-kill, instant respawn and increasingly difficult level design creates an addicting, repetitive gameplay structure where the design of each level becomes ingrained in your conscience. You can boot it up between study sessions, play through a handful of levels (or bash your head against one stubborn stage), and still close the laptop feeling like you’ve achieved something.

Hotline Miami - a stylised and blisteringly fast shooter

If Super Meat Boy was a top-down shooter, it would be Hotline Miami. You start each day in a fever dream of 1989 Miami beach house and receive daily cryptic phone calls instructing you to kill everyone in certain buildings. Every stage is a pure, undistilled euphoric dopamine rush, with the same one-hit kill and instant respawn mechanics that make the previous game so fun. Kills are satisfying, with enemies' blood flying everywhere, and there's a huge arsenal of weapons to choose from. Movement and timing are key - burst through a door, grab a shotgun, shoot someone, throw the shotgun at someone else, beat someone to death with your bare hands; it's like jazz improv with guns. Each level is only a few minutes long and, soon, breezing through stages becomes almost hypnotic, especially with that pounding vaporwave soundtrack. And backtracking to the getaway car while you bask in the human rubble you've created caps each level off perfectly.

Katamari Damacy - a relaxed rolling ball of joy

If you need something more chill (and let's face it, going back to uni is stressful enough), Katamari Damacy is the game for you. You play as the Prince of All Cosmos, tasked by the King to roll a sticky ball called a katamari around the world, collecting objects to make it bigger and bigger. Early levels start out small with objects like paperclips and thumbtacks, but things start getting chaotic when you're rolling up furniture, animals, people, buildings and even entire islands. Levels vary in length from 3-25 minutes, ideal for a short break between studying. Katamari Damacy’s surreal visuals, phenomenal soundtrack ('Lonely Rolling Star' is one of the greatest songs ever recorded), and absurd story are a welcome break from reality, and because it’s low-stakes, it works wonderfully as a mental reset after an arduous day revising.