There are tons of simple, compact, good, usually pretty fast-playing tabletop games around, mostly card games but with some exceptions. Love Letter and Arboretu

There are tons of simple, compact, good, usually pretty fast-playing tabletop games around, mostly card games but with some exceptions. Love Letter and Arboretum are rightly famous (in board gamer circles). Hive, as a non-card two-player game. Sushi Go has quite a few "things" but you only choose some of them for a given game. They do tend not to have a strong melding of theme and mechanics, which I think is how/why theme-heavy games can end up being so complex—tighter theme integration implies, if not requires, more mechanics and bits and bobs.