The one single thing which I would suggest and which would likely perfectly fit into the category you look for is Halfway.
It is a rather short game ~15h, where you play a group of guys on a spaceship. These guys awake from their cryo sleep and find anything going havok on the ship. Companions zombiefied and the ship randomly jumping in the galaxy.
The combat is fun and maybe described as lightweight XCom Combat, though I liked it more than the new Firaxis XCom. You go through level by level, have optional levels you can do, e.g. to secure additional weapons and the story is spread nicely on the whole game: In between missions you can talk to your companions, but also within the missions there is a lot of dialogues, which however are all very short and to the point. So the average amount of text per fight, is just perfect. Also the story itself is great and very grounded. No "save the world" or "become a god!" scenario we see so often.
The character and item development could have been much better.
I did a German video review over
here: Even if you don't understand a word, I think you'll get what it is about.
It was one of the very few games which I finished and really thought "Yes, I want more of that!" also because the ending was great for my taste.
