4Stack #24 — answers & breakdown
Thursday, August 6, 2026
Open worlds, sorted by publisher and by setting at the same time. Several of these games are honestly both, so the order you solve in decides whether it feels fair.
The sixteen cards in this puzzle were: Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Bloodborne, God of War, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, The Crew, Rainbow Six, Fallout, Days Gone, Metro, Death Stranding, Cyberpunk 2077, Ghostrunner, Cloudpunk, Observer.
The four stacks
PS4-era Sony exclusives
Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Bloodborne, God of War
Sony's PS4 run, the generation where first-party exclusives became the whole pitch for the console.
Ubisoft franchises
Far Cry, Watch Dogs, The Crew, Rainbow Six
Ubisoft franchises, all built on the same broad open-world scaffolding.
Post-apocalyptic worlds
Fallout, Days Gone, Metro, Death Stranding
Post-apocalyptic settings — and the overlap is real rather than accidental. Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone are both Sony exclusives, so yellow has to be settled first before this group can be.
Cyberpunk settings
Cyberpunk 2077, Ghostrunner, Cloudpunk, Observer
Cyberpunk settings. Cloudpunk and Observer are the deep cuts; Observer is a Bloober Team game and stars Rutger Hauer, which is about as on-the-nose a casting choice as the genre allows.
Want to try it yourself? Play puzzle #24 — archive plays don't affect your streak. Or jump into today's puzzle.