4Stack #8 — answers & breakdown
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Genres, with a purple group defined by exclusion rather than inclusion — always the meanest way to write a category.
The sixteen cards in this puzzle were: Tekken, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, Forza, Gran Turismo, Mario Kart, Need for Speed, Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, Story of Seasons, My Time at Portia, Nioh, Lies of P, Mortal Shell, Code Vein.
The four stacks
Fighting game franchises
Tekken, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear
The four pillars of fighting games. Guilty Gear is the outlier in mainstream recognition but is deeply respected inside the FGC.
Racing franchises
Forza, Gran Turismo, Mario Kart, Need for Speed
Racing, spanning simulation (Gran Turismo, Forza) and arcade (Mario Kart, Need for Speed).
Farm & life sims
Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, Story of Seasons, My Time at Portia
Farming and life sims. Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons are famously the same original series split across a licensing dispute, which is its own trivia rabbit hole.
Soulslikes (not by FromSoft)
Nioh, Lies of P, Mortal Shell, Code Vein
Soulslikes that are not made by FromSoftware — the exclusion is the category. If you tried to put a FromSoftware game here, that was the trap working.
Want to try it yourself? Play puzzle #8 — archive plays don't affect your streak. Or jump into today's puzzle.