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Indie hits

Order by the year of full release. You place all 46 cards on one timeline, one at a time. You start with three lives, and ten right in a row wins a lost one back.

Indie hits
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Order by the year of full release. Drag or tap it onto the line
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46
Cards
3
Lives per run
release years and dates
Ordered by
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Card reveal

How the indie hits timeline game works

The cards here are independent games that broke through, made by tiny teams or even a single developer: platformers, roguelikes, farming sims, survival sandboxes and party games. Each card carries the developer's name, and you sort them by the year of the game's full release. The timeline starts with one card and its year visible. Slot each new game where you think it sits. A correct placement shows the year; a wrong one still files the game in its real position and takes away one of your three lives.

Early access is the big trap in this deck. Several of these games were playable, and even hugely popular, long before their official launch, and the card counts only the full release. Other games sat quietly for a while before a sudden wave of fame. Sequels and follow-ups from the same studio give you useful anchors. The run covers a fairly short span, so expect neighbors to be close together.

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.

What's in the deck

Here are 28 of the 46 cards you might be dealt, with 18 more in the deck. Their values stay hidden until you place them.

  • Cave Story Studio Pixel
  • World of Goo 2D Boy
  • Castle Crashers The Behemoth
  • Spelunky Mossmouth
  • Limbo Playdead
  • Terraria Re-Logic
  • Bastion Supergiant Games
  • Fez Polytron
  • Hotline Miami Dennaton Games
  • Papers, Please Lucas Pope
  • Geometry Dash Robert Topala
  • Goat Simulator Coffee Stain Studios
  • Five Nights at Freddy's Scott Cawthon
  • Rocket League Psyonix
  • Inside Playdead
  • Hollow Knight Team Cherry
  • Celeste Maddy Makes Games
  • Dead Cells Motion Twin
  • Subnautica Unknown Worlds Entertainment
  • Untitled Goose Game House House
  • Disco Elysium ZA/UM
  • Fall Guys Mediatonic
  • Cult of the Lamb Massive Monster
  • Stray BlueTwelve Studio
  • Balatro LocalThunk
  • Hades II Supergiant Games
  • Hollow Knight: Silksong Team Cherry
  • Peak Aggro Crab and Landfall

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