How to play the Grand Theft Auto timeline game

Every card is a Grand Theft Auto release: the main games, handheld spin-offs, downloadable episodes, the online mode and a remaster collection. You sort them by the year each came out, with the platform or format printed under the title. One game is placed for you with its year in view. Put each new card where you think it fits. If you're right, its year shows; if you're wrong, it still lands in its true place but you lose one of your three lives.

The series grew from top-down mayhem into sprawling open cities, and its handheld side stories filled the gaps between big releases. Those portable entries and the add-on episodes are the cards that bunch up. The format line helps a lot, since each console generation hosted its own run of games. Revisits to earlier cities can fool you, because a familiar setting doesn't mean an early release.

Want a longer game? On the deck tree you can tick this deck alongside any other one measured in release years and dates, and they shuffle into a single timeline together.

How players are doing

This deck has been played 18 times. An average run places 9.3 cards, and 81% of all placements land in the right spot. 39% of runs place every card.

The cards players get wrong most often:

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories missed 42% of the time, usually by a single place
Grand Theft Auto Advance missed 40% of the time, usually by about 2 places
Grand Theft Auto IV missed 31% of the time, usually by about 2 places

The safest card is Grand Theft Auto V, placed right every time it has come up.