4Stack #26 — answers & breakdown
Saturday, August 8, 2026
Rhythm games across four very different reasons for existing: the arcade, the living room, the genre experiment, and the internet.
The sixteen cards in this puzzle were: Guitar Hero, DDR, Beat Saber, osu!, Just Dance, Rock Band, SingStar, Wii Music, Crypt of the NecroDancer, Hi-Fi Rush, Metal: Hellsinger, BPM: Bullets Per Minute, Friday Night Funkin', A Dance of Fire and Ice, Muse Dash, Rhythm Doctor.
The four stacks
Rhythm game icons
Guitar Hero, DDR, Beat Saber, osu!
The rhythm canon. osu! is the outlier as a free, community-built PC game rather than a commercial release.
Party music games
Just Dance, Rock Band, SingStar, Wii Music
Party music games designed for a room full of people, which is also why most of them died with the plastic instrument boom.
Rhythm hybrids
Crypt of the NecroDancer, Hi-Fi Rush, Metal: Hellsinger, BPM: Bullets Per Minute
Rhythm crossed with something else — a roguelike, an action game, and two shooters. Hi-Fi Rush is the one that hid its rhythm systems well enough that people finished it without noticing.
Internet-era rhythm
Friday Night Funkin', A Dance of Fire and Ice, Muse Dash, Rhythm Doctor
Rhythm games that grew out of internet communities rather than publishers. Friday Night Funkin' began as a Newgrounds game jam entry and became one of the most-modded games of its era.
Want to try it yourself? Play puzzle #26 — archive plays don't affect your streak. Or jump into today's puzzle.