Episode by Episode
| Episode | Typical runtime |
|---|---|
| Episode 1 - Home Sweet Home | About 1 hour |
| Episode 2 - A Long Way Down | About 3-4 hours |
| Episode 3 - Decay Part 1 | About 6 hours |
| Available story total | Roughly 10 hours |
| Both routes + all dead ends | Roughly 18-20 hours |
Episode 1's hour is a design statement: a complete arc - lockdown, ritual, demon, first irreversible decision - at short-story length, built to be finished in one sitting and to make starting Episode 2 feel less like a decision than a reflex. Episode 2 widens everything, including the clock. Decay is simply the biggest object the developer has shipped: six hours of route-exclusive content that recontextualises the four hours before it.
What Makes Your Run Longer
- Examining everything. Rooms are dense with reactive objects, jokes and quiet reframing details. Thorough players add 20-30% per episode - and get a better story for it; in this game, exploration is content, not padding.
- Second conversations. NPC dialogue updates after major beats. Players who re-talk to everyone read scenes beeline players never see.
- Dead-end hunting. Decay's four dead ends are short individually but finding the fourth, plus replaying decision clusters with saves, adds an hour or more.
- Route completion. The second route from a finale save adds Decay/Burial's full length minus shared ground - the single biggest block of 'extra' game.
Note what is absent from that list: difficulty. The puzzles are light by design, combat does not exist, and nothing in the game can stonewall your clock except your own curiosity. Your runtime is a reading speed and a thoroughness setting, which makes other players' numbers unusually personal.
What Makes It Shorter (And Why to Resist)
A beeline run - objectives only, first dialogue option, no re-examining - can cut the total to seven hours or so. It is also the worst version of the game: the trust pattern you build semi-blind still assigns your route, the visions still fire, but the connective tissue that makes Episode 3's payoffs land lives precisely in the rooms and second conversations you skipped. Players who rush this game frequently report the strange experience of admiring its reputation more than their evening.
The middle path most veterans recommend: play Episode 1 exactly as it pulls you (an hour, no strategy), explore Episode 2 properly because its record decides your route, and treat Decay as the main course it is. Save the optimisation for pass two - dead ends and the opposite route - where it belongs, and where this site's episodes guide turns it into a plan.
Cost Per Hour - The Value Verdict
Free, for roughly ten hours of story, the game lands at the best value there is before any replay - already strong for its niche, where five-hour visual novels at higher prices are common. And across a completionist's twenty hours with both routes pending free updates still to come, it becomes one of the cheapest cost-per-hour propositions in story-driven horror, full stop.
And the two unreleased releases are pure future value on the same purchase: Burial adds a second Episode 3, Episode 4 lands Decay's cliffhanger, and your existing saves are the admission tickets. Measured honestly - released content only, today - it is a ten-hour game worth its price. Measured with its own roadmap, it is a down payment that has so far always paid out.
Runtime After Burial and Episode 4
Every number on this page is a snapshot of an unfinished game, and it is worth sketching where the totals are heading. Burial, built to Decay's scale, should add roughly another six hours of route-exclusive story - taking a both-routes completionist run toward twenty-six hours. Episode 4 then closes the Decay line with an instalment whose length nobody knows; matching Part 1's ambition would put the finished game's full, everything-seen runtime somewhere near or past thirty hours.
That trajectory reframes the value question entirely. What is a free download today is on pace to become one of the larger story games in its niche, with every addition arriving free to existing owners. Players measuring the current ten hours are pricing a house from its finished rooms; the honest measure includes the construction record - three deliveries, each larger than the last, zero additional charges, zero abandoned promises so far. The clock, like everything else about this game, rewards the patient.
Speedruns and First Runs
For completeness: speedrunners already route this game, and their clocks - skipping dialogue, beelining objectives, executing known decision paths - compress the available story to a small fraction of the numbers in this post. Those times are athletic achievements, not reading experiences, and they prove mainly that the game's length lives in its text: remove the reading and the game nearly vanishes. Your first run should sit at the opposite pole. Read everything, examine everything, let the hour of Episode 1 take the evening it wants. The clock in this post measures the game as written; the speedrun measures it as typed. Only one of those is the product the developer sold you, and it is not the shorter one.