I fell into this idea after a long commute where I only had fifteen spare minutes before bed and didn’t want to boot up something massive, so I tried a couple of tiny projects instead and weirdly those bite-sized runs stuck way harder in my head than last month’s marathon playthroughs; it wasn’t just the twists, it was the way they wrapped up cleanly—one clever mechanic, one sharp ending, and suddenly I could remember the exact mug on my desk and the song in my headphones, like the whole moment got sealed in amber.
When people ask for a starting point or just a way to reframe shorter experiences, I usually share https://www.roger.com/articles/game/shortest-games-longest-memories/ because it nudged me to see brevity as a feature: you get a clean setup, a tidy payoff, and room for the small sensory stuff to matter. Since leaning into that mindset, I actually recall more details, and the memories feel brighter even though the sessions are tiny.
I’ve started judging sessions by how often someone says “remember when…” a week later; the compact ones win more often than the sprawling epics, like a perfect chorus that outlives the whole album.
