4Stack #28 — answers & breakdown
Monday, August 10, 2026
A very recent board. Everything here broke out between roughly 2020 and 2024, and three of the four groups are genres that barely existed before that.
The sixteen cards in this puzzle were: Balatro, Palworld, Helldivers 2, Black Myth: Wukong, Among Us, Town of Salem, Goose Goose Duck, Project Winter, Vampire Survivors, Brotato, HoloCure, 20 Minutes Till Dawn, Only Up!, Chained Together, A Difficult Game About Climbing, Peaks of Yore.
The four stacks
2024 sensations
Balatro, Palworld, Helldivers 2, Black Myth: Wukong
2024's breakouts, all four from wildly different scales of studio. Balatro was made by a single anonymous developer working under the name LocalThunk.
Social deduction
Among Us, Town of Salem, Goose Goose Duck, Project Winter
Social deduction. Among Us launched in 2018 and did almost nothing for two years before streamers found it during lockdown.
Survivor-likes
Vampire Survivors, Brotato, HoloCure, 20 Minutes Till Dawn
Survivor-likes, every one of them descended from Vampire Survivors and its idea of removing the attack button entirely.
Rage climbing games
Only Up!, Chained Together, A Difficult Game About Climbing, Peaks of Yore
Rage climbing games — the Getting Over It lineage, built specifically so that a single mistake can cost you an hour. Peaks of Yore is the most po-faced of them and the only one presenting itself as a mountaineering sim.
Want to try it yourself? Play puzzle #28 — archive plays don't affect your streak. Or jump into today's puzzle.