Hi ho
I was looking back over old material recently (de-cluttering various aspects of my life) and was reading some old reviews I wrote in a different galaxy.
One of them contained this:

"The game took about 10 hours to complete, so it isn't long. But what it lacks in length and openness, it makes up for in spades by the sight and sound of a major work plus a number of entertaining puzzles".

The game came out in 1997 and I reviewed it in 2003. How long games take is a combination of many things, but 10 hours for most adventure games these days is almost epic!
Or is that just me??

It is not just you. The games seem to be getting shorter and shorter. I miss some of those 20 hour games.

Good to see you posting. We've all been worrying about you!

It is nice to be back oldbroad. Still a way to go, but we were able to return to our home recently which is part of the recovery in and of itself, as is doing normal day to day things

Unless it's a short casual, flotsam, I measure most games by days or even weeks, and RPG's by months !!
I think I'd faint if I ever finished an Adventure game in 10 hours

Guess I must be the slowest player on the planet ....

But even so, I do feel a lot of Adventures are shorter.
Maybe because some types have become more expensive to make so the length is cut

And yes. So nice to hear you are safe

Games are much shorter these days, flotsam! Sometimes, it is reflected in price, with games coming out with lower prices, often under ten dollars, rather than the average 19.99-29-99 that they used to run. Although there are always exceptions.

Dark Fall: Ghost Vigil is one of the longer games I've played in quite awhile. I'm also not using a walkthrough, which is fun and refreshing! I'm going old school on this one!

I always used to consider 20 hours to be a normal length for adventure games.
A 10 hour length would be considered "long" now, at least for an adventure game.
And it seems like 3 hours or less is more common than 10 hours now.

Very few adventure games have actually seemed "epic" in recent years.
Daedalic released a few, though I think 2014 may have been the last year they
released anything that actually "felt" epic.

There's more to a good game than length, but there's also a limit to how short
a game can be before it's diminished to the point of playing more like a demo
than a full game.

This haven't crossed my mind, but it's probably true. I rarely value games myself by virtue of their length, although it's obviously is a factor to consider. I wouldn't have liked the Tex Murphy games as much if they had been over in 3 hours, and I wouldn't have minded if The Longest Journey had been as long as Phileas Fogg's journey around the earth.

However, when peeking at my old top 10 lists on this very forum, I see that a majority of the games are very old, and quite a few of them (Amber, The Dark Eye, The Dame Was Loaded, Blackout, Leisure Suit Larry) are short games by any standard. So they DID make short (AND good!) adventure games in the past as well.

Or maybe we're just getting faster with age?

These days I have to play for shorter sessions than I once did - which partially explains the length of time it takes me to get through a game.
But if the game is a good one, and I am enjoying myself, I don't feel it matters at ALL how long it takes me to reach the end.
A good game is a good game and the length of it is not always the most significant factor

I think 20 was what I thought of as standard at that time too Jenny.
And I agree that a good game didn't and doesn't have to be long (and nor is a long game any guarantee of it being good - who wants more of a bad game!!).
I just can't imagine making that comment about a game now. Which isn't a plus or a minus just something I was interested to be reminded of

How long did it take you to complete Amber or The Dark Eye the first time you played them?
I'm pretty sure they took me about 20 hours each. Of course it takes less time if you've played them before (and remember them pretty well) or if you're a seasoned adventure gamer. But they were among the first games I played, and even occasionally checking a walkthrough (when I was out of ideas and was too stuck to make progress), they took about 20 hours each. They'd probably take less time if I followed a walkthrough step by step, but even then I think they'd be more like 10 hours than 3.

I'm pretty sure that neither lasted more than 7-8 hours. But I can by completely mistaken of course. I might remember them as shorter since I enjoyed them so much.