Gaming

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Among Us

Finding the impostor on a spaceship, two years after release and during a lockdown. Left the language a single word, sus, which is doing better than the game.

▸ 2018peak 2020still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Baldi's Basics

A game-jam entry made to look like a 1990s educational CD-ROM, in which a maths teacher called Baldi chases you with a ruler when you get a sum wrong, uploaded to itch.io in March 2018 and turned into a YouTube phenomenon within weeks. The record notes that the joke was the graphics and the fear was real, and that the full title, Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning, was never used by anyone.

▸ 2018peak 2018†2019

● Aliven.✎ 4

Beat Saber

A VR rhythm game in which the player slices flying blocks with two lightsabers in time to music. The record's entry for the game that sold the headsets: it was made by a small Czech studio, became the reason most people bought a Quest, was bought by Facebook in 2019, and its clips of players in cluttered bedrooms swinging at nothing became the shorthand for VR on every platform.

▸ 2018peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Bee Swarm Simulator

A Roblox game in which the player collects pollen with a swarm of bees, converts it to honey and slowly, over hundreds of hours, buys better bees. The record's entry for the platform's idle-game phenomenon: it has been on the front page since 2018 with almost no marketing, its update schedule is treated by players as a rumour mill, and its bees have names that adults have learned against their will.

▸ 2018peak 2020still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 2

Big Chungus

A fat rabbit on a fake game box, presented to a GameStop employee's mother. Meaningless by design, and therefore unusually durable; ended when the actual game shipped.

▸ 2018peak 2018†2020

● Aliven.✎ 4

BitLife

A text-based life simulator in which the player is born, presses a button to age a year, and chooses from an endless menu of jobs, crimes, marriages and deaths. The record's entry for the game that TikTok made: a modest release in 2018, then in 2019 screenshots of absurd lives, prison escapes and inherited fortunes filled feeds, it reached the top of the charts, and 'BitLife challenge' became a video format.

▸ 2018peak 2019still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Bloons TD 6

The sixth tower-defence game about monkeys popping balloons, released on Steam in December 2018 as the descendant of a 2007 Flash game and a permanent fixture of Steam's top hundred for years, with a Twitch presence built on streamers playing it in a second window. The record notes that a Flash-era series became one of the most-played PC games of the 2020s without anyone announcing it.

▸ 2018peak 2023still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Brawl Stars

A top-down arena shooter of three-player teams, short matches and dozens of characters called brawlers. The record's entry for the mobile game with the strangest curve it holds: a solid launch in 2018, a slump around 2022 during which its own community called it dead, and then a 2024 revival that made it the studio's biggest earner and turned its characters into a playground language in most of Europe.

▸ 2018peak 2024still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Celeste

A platformer about a young woman climbing a mountain while a purple version of herself argues she should stop, released in January 2018 and grown from a four-day Pico-8 jam game. It became the year's indie darling, and an Assist Mode that let players slow the game down started an argument about difficulty that has not ended.

▸ 2018peak 2018still up

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 3

Cranking 90s

Building a spiral tower of ramps and walls at high speed in Fortnite, turning ninety degrees each layer to gain height on an opponent; a technique named and spread in 2018 and widely imitated by people who then fell off it. The record's entry for the year everyone learned that the building game was actually a building game.

▸ 2018peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Diablo Immortal

A mobile Diablo game announced at BlizzCon 2018 to a room expecting a PC sequel, and remembered for a developer asking the crowd 'do you guys not have phones'. The record's entry for the worst reveal in games and the launch that followed: the 2022 release earned tens of millions in its first weeks and one of the lowest user scores ever recorded, both for the same reason, which was its spending on gems.

▸ 2018peak 2022still up

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 2

Emergency Meeting

The button in Among Us that halts the game so the crew can argue about who is the impostor, and from 2020 the phrase for any group chat suddenly convened to discuss a betrayal. The record notes the game launched in June 2018 to almost no one and that the button was pressed by most of the world two years later.

▸ 2018peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Emote Dance

Any dance that exists mainly because it is in Fortnite — the floss, the griddy, the Orange Justice — and is performed in real life by children who learned it from a purchase. The record's entry for the game as a dance school.

▸ 2018peak 2023still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 4

Fallout 76

Bethesda's online Fallout, released in November 2018 with no human characters, a great many bugs and a collector's edition whose canvas bag arrived in nylon. The record's entry for a launch that became a genre of complaint, and for its comeback: Wastelanders added people in 2020, and the Amazon television series sent a million players back to Appalachia in April 2024.

▸ 2018peak 2018†2019

● Aliven.✎ 3

Fear & Hunger

A dungeon role-playing game of extreme cruelty made in RPG Maker by one Finnish developer, released in December 2018 to a few thousand players and, after its 2022 sequel Termina, a YouTube and TikTok subject in 2023 as the game whose coin-flip deaths and unspeakable content people watched explained rather than played. The record notes that the game's audience is mostly people who would not touch it.

▸ 2018peak 2023still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Gacha Life

A character-dressing app in which players build anime-style avatars and pose them in scenes, used to make the 'Gacha' videos and mini-films that filled YouTube from 2019. The record's entry for a tool that became a subculture: the videos were made mostly by children, the community produced its own slang and formats, and a wave of inappropriate content in 2019 caused moderation panics the app is still associated with.

▸ 2018peak 2019still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

God of War (2018)

Sony's reboot of a series about rage, in which Kratos became a father, spoke quietly and said the word 'boy' often enough that the internet built a meme out of it. Released in April 2018 to perfect scores and a Game of the Year, and the record's entry for the moment the internet decided a 2005 character could be sad and be forgiven.

▸ 2018peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

A story game in which the player attends Hogwarts as a new student, with an energy meter that runs out mid-scene and asks for money to continue. The record's entry for the energy-timer scandal: in its first week a scene in which the player's character is strangled by a plant until they pay or wait became the most-shared complaint in mobile gaming, and the game was profitable anyway, which was the second lesson.

▸ 2018peak 2018still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 4

Helix Jump

A ball bounces down a spiral tower and you rotate the tower so it lands on the right colours. Released by a French publisher in February 2018, it was one of the most downloaded games of that year on both stores and defined the hyper-casual model: free, one tap, an advert every death. The record files it as the game that made the phrase 'hyper-casual' a category.

▸ 2018peak 2018†2019

● Aliven.✎ 4

Marvel's Spider-Man

Insomniac's PlayStation Spider-Man, released in September 2018 to the fastest sales of any game on the console at the time, and to a pre-launch argument about a puddle. Puddlegate, the record's name for a comparison of a 2017 trailer's puddle with the 2018 game's smaller one, was the internet's word for downgrade discourse until people played it and swung about instead.

▸ 2018peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Monster Hunter: World

Capcom's 2018 Monster Hunter, the first in the series built for the West, which became the company's best-selling game ever and turned a Japanese portable cult into a global co-op ritual. The record's entry for the year everyone learned what a Rathalos was, and for the palico, whose costumes were the game's most shared content.

▸ 2018peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Overcooked! 2

A co-operative kitchen game in which four players shout ingredients at each other across moving floors, released in August 2018 and the pandemic's standard test of a relationship once online play and free lockdown giveaways put it in most households in 2020. The record notes that the phrase 'relationship-ending game' attached to the sequel, though the original had the same effect with fewer players.

▸ 2018peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

PUBG Mobile

The phone version of the battle royale that started the genre, built by Tencent and released worldwide in March 2018. The record's entry for the mobile game that a government banned: it was the largest game in India by 2020, it was blocked there in September 2020 alongside a hundred other Chinese apps, and its return as Battlegrounds Mobile India in 2021 was covered like a national reunion.

▸ 2018peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Pummel Party

A board game with minigames in the manner of Mario Party, but on PC, online, and with items designed to ruin friendships, released in September 2018 by two Australian developers and adopted by streaming groups during the pandemic years as the thing to play between larger games. The record notes it as the format Nintendo never put online, made by someone else.

▸ 2018peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Raft

A co-op survival game on a raft, in which flotsam is hooked out of the sea and a shark eats the raft while you build it, released into early access in May 2018 by three Swedish students and completed in June 2022, when it reached over a hundred thousand concurrent players for the finale. The record notes that the shark's name, Bruce, was given by the community and adopted by the developers.

▸ 2018peak 2022still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Red Dead Redemption 2

Rockstar's slow western, released in October 2018 to the biggest opening weekend in entertainment at the time and an internet that could not believe the horses' testicles shrank in the cold. A crunch story before launch, a 'Lenny' bar scene after, and a 2019 PC release that keeps it on Steam's charts every winter. The record's entry for a launch measured in detail rather than speed.

▸ 2018peak 2018still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Return of the Obra Dinn

An insurance investigator boards a ship that has drifted back to port in 1807 with everyone on it dead, and uses a pocket watch to see each death and a book to name each body. Drawn in one-bit dithering like a 1980s Macintosh and released in October 2018 by the maker of Papers, Please, it was the year's best deduction game and the record files the phrase 'sixty crew' as a threat.

▸ 2018peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Nintendo's crossover fighter, revealed in June 2018 with every character from the series' history and the caption 'Everyone is here', released that December and expanded until 2021 through character reveals that became the internet's most reliable reaction-video content. The record's entry for a launch whose trailers were the events, from Banjo to Steve to Sora.

▸ 2018peak 2020still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 2

Tilted Towers

The city on Fortnite's original island, added in January 2018 and instantly the map's most-landed and most-died-in location; destroyed by a volcano in May 2019, mourned, and returned to the map in January 2022. The record's entry for the first piece of video-game real estate to have a funeral.

▸ 2018peak 2018†2019

● Aliven.✎ 4

Toca Life World

A digital dolls' house of shops, homes and characters with no goals, no scores and a great many in-app locations to buy. The record's entry for the game that runs a generation's imaginative play: its Swedish studio built a decade of children's apps into this one, and from 2021 'Toca' videos of players staging dramas and decorating houses were among the largest categories of children's content on YouTube and TikTok.

▸ 2018peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Tower of Hell

A Roblox obstacle course with no checkpoints: a randomly assembled tower that resets when the timer runs out, so falling from the top means starting at the bottom. The record's entry for the obby as a spectator sport, because during 2020 it was among the most-played games on the platform and its clips of near-misses and rage quits filled TikTok.

▸ 2018peak 2020still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Adopt Me

The Roblox pet-raising game that launched in July 2017 as a role-play about adopting babies, pivoted to pets, and in 2020 held nearly two million concurrent players and a trading economy with its own scammers. The record's entry for the game that taught a generation the word 'legendary' meant 'expensive'.

▸ 2017peak 2020still up

↺ Undeadn.✎ 4

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

The phone version of Animal Crossing, a campsite where the player collected furniture and befriended animals with a gacha of fortune cookies. The record's entry for the game that lived twice: it was Nintendo's second phone hit, it swelled in 2020 alongside New Horizons, and in November 2024 its free service closed and was replaced within days by a paid, offline Pocket Camp Complete.

▸ 2017peak 2020†2024

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Cuphead

A run-and-gun game drawn in the style of 1930s cartoons, animated by hand and inked on paper by two Canadian brothers who remortgaged their houses to finish it. Released in September 2017, it was the year's hardest-looking game, and a games journalist's tutorial-stage struggle at Gamescom had already made it a meme.

▸ 2017peak 2017still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Dead Cells

A headless prisoner fights through a castle that resets when he dies, fast enough to be called a roguevania and pretty enough to be sold on the animation alone. Made by a French workers' cooperative and released in Early Access in May 2017, it became the standard example of Early Access done properly, and the record notes that support ended in 2024 after years of updates.

▸ 2017peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Default (Fortnite)

A player using one of Fortnite's free default skins, and therefore assumed to be new, poor or eight; also the dance ('default dance') that came with it. The record's entry for the first video-game class system to be visible from a hundred metres away, established within weeks of the Battle Royale mode's launch in September 2017.

▸ 2017peak 2018still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Doki Doki Literature Club

A free dating-sim about a school poetry club with a content warning at the start that most people ignored, then understood. Released in September 2017 by an American developer, it was the last big streaming shock of the year and produced a legally cautious wave of news coverage in early 2018. The record files the character Monika and the file she lives in.

▸ 2017peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Escape from Tarkov

A hardcore extraction shooter in closed beta from 2017 and sold from its own site, which became the most-watched game on Twitch in January 2020 through a drops event that gave viewers loot for watching. The record notes that it invented the extraction genre, that wipes reset everyone's progress twice a year, and that a 250-dollar edition in 2024 turned its own fans against it for a month.

▸ 2017peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Flee the Facility

A Roblox round game in which one player is the Beast with a hammer and four survivors hack computers to open the exits, hiding in lockers and freeing each other from cryogenic pods. The record's entry for the platform's Dead by Daylight for children: it was among the most-played games on Roblox in 2020, its hammer skins were a status economy, and 'the Beast is camping' was a complaint heard from bedrooms for years.

▸ 2017peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Fortnite

Epic's free battle royale, bolted onto a co-op building game in September 2017 and, within a year, the thing every child on earth was talking about. The 2018 craze is the record's subject: the dances, the school bans, the Drake stream, the parents asking what a V-Buck is. The game itself has simply continued, season after season, as though nothing happened.

▸ 2017peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Free Fire

A battle royale of fifty players and ten-minute matches, built to run on cheap phones and therefore to run on most of the world's. The record's entry for the biggest game most Western players have never opened: it was the most-downloaded mobile game on Earth in 2019, its esports finals drew the largest live audiences in the category, and its February 2022 ban in India was a diplomatic event.

▸ 2017peak 2020still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy

A man in a cauldron climbs a mountain of junk using only a sledgehammer, and one slip can undo an hour. Bennett Foddy narrates over the falls with philosophy and calm. It went viral in early 2018 as the definitive streaming rage game, and the record keeps it as proof that watching someone lose everything is a genre.

▸ 2017peak 2018still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 4

Golf It!

Physics minigolf for up to eight players in which the ball can be hit as hard as the mouse allows and usually leaves the course entirely. Released in Early Access in February 2017, it was the group-streaming game of that spring, and the record files it as a sequel-in-spirit to Golf With Your Friends that lost the argument about which one was better.

▸ 2017peak 2017still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Granny (Game)

A mobile horror game in which you have five days to escape a house while a grandmother with a bat listens for every dropped object, released in November 2017 by a Swedish developer and one of the most-played mobile games of 2018 on the strength of YouTube playthroughs. The record notes that the house's layout was known by heart by a generation of children who had never held a real bat.

▸ 2017peak 2018†2019

● Aliven.✎ 4

Hollow Knight

A hand-drawn game about a small bug with a nail exploring a dead kingdom of bugs, made by three people in Adelaide and released in February 2017. It sold for years on word of mouth, and the six-year wait for its sequel Silksong became a running joke that ended in September 2025. The record files both the game and the wait.

▸ 2017peak 2025still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Homescapes

A match-three game in which a butler called Austin renovates his parents' house, advertised for years with pull-the-pin puzzles that barely existed in it. The record's entry for the fake-advert scandal: in 2020 the UK's advertising regulator banned its adverts and those of its sibling Gardenscapes for misleading players, and the ruling became the moment 'misleading mobile ads' had a case number.

▸ 2017peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Hot Drop

Landing at the most popular, best-looted spot on a battle royale map at the start of a match, along with twenty other people who had the same idea, and usually dying within a minute. The record's entry for the strategy that is not a strategy, in general use from PUBG in 2017.

▸ 2017peak 2019still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Jailbreak (Roblox)

A Roblox cops-and-robbers game in which prisoners break out, rob banks and trains, and police chase them across a small open world. The record's entry for the game that proved Roblox could pay a living: two developers built it, it reached a billion visits within about a year, and it became the platform's example whenever a journalist asked whether anyone made money there.

▸ 2017peak 2018still up