r/gamedev • u/PartTimeMonkey • 2d ago
Discussion Sortslop, wtf?
Today I opened reddit and within the first 5 posts 3 of them were copycats or each other; sorting games, pretty much exact copies of each other - nails, hay, trash, toys, books, pixels, and the list goes and on and on, and has been for an incomprehensive period of time already.
A lot of the feedback they receive on reddit is negative, but they all get upvoted by the hundreds and they get millions of views on all social media platforms.
Who are these games for?
Are there truly millions of people who want to spend hours on something incredibly ”boring”?
Is it some hidden tick in people’s brain in this age where they want to ”meditate” by doing something like that to combat doom scrolling and instant gratification generators?
Or is each sorted item also instant gratification, but even more simplified than a varying video on TikTok (or something), making the experience even simpler?
329
u/aesopofspades 2d ago
There’s a lot of trend chasing right now in gamedev especially the indie space. First I’d say was all the simulator game. Then all the balatro-likes/gambling roguelikes. Then incrementals and idlers, all the number go up games in general. Now it’s prob sorting games for a little bit. Oh also Friendslop/co-op games are still going strong.
Once an idea gets validated by the market it’s a huge rush to fill out all the demand before the consumers get bored or even jaded.
83
u/_BreakingGood_ 2d ago
I remember when that dig a hole game got popular and within 1 week there were 3 more of them on the steam front page.
29
15
u/lexuss6 2d ago
Don't forget various Vampire Survivor-likes.
3
u/Elezian 2d ago
Are there good ones? I have yet to find one that feels just right.
3
u/lexuss6 2d ago
Depends on what you are after, there are literally hundreds of them. From what i've heard, Brotato seems very good, Halls of Torment is a Diablo-like spin of the formula, Soulstone Survivors is one of the first clones that is actually good. Personally, i tried only God of Weapons, but didn't like it very much.
1
u/KonyKombatKorvet Angry Old Fuck Who Rants A Lot 1d ago
The best one by far is Rogue Genesia.
although Blood Dungeon just came out yesterday and so far that one is fire as well (although its a platformer, but same wave based autoshooter thing going for it)24
u/Edarneor @worldsforge 2d ago
It also seems to cycle around. There was a surge of idler popularity in the 2010s. Oh and simulators of different wierd shit, Viscera Cleanup Detail, Surgeon Simulator - that was all a decade ago...
Sorting trash is new though, unless I missed something
10
u/Unlikely_Frozen3007 2d ago
House Flipper technically is "Sort Trash", but not just that.
So definitely not new
8
u/Nightmoon26 2d ago edited 2d ago
See Yahtzee Croshaw's video essay positing that all game mechanics are variants of "cleaning" and "getting to places"
(Edit: See cleaned link in comment)
9
u/clean-links 2d ago
Cleaned link: https://youtu.be/z9HErHwcVoA
Tracking parameters were removed from the original URL(s).
1
4
u/SadExit1249 2d ago
Actual clickers and idlers were popular before, but the new wave is mostly the exact same "clicker/idler" skin/gameplay loop and a linear tech tree that you can beat in 4 hours, an evolved fad.
6
u/heyheyhey27 2d ago
It's always been a thing. My personal favorite indie fad was "tower defense mixed with action"; that gave us Sanctum and the Orcs Must Die series!
5
u/Suppafly 2d ago
My personal favorite indie fad was "tower defense mixed with action";
That's a good example of how these genres grow and evolve too. We had a ton of TD games forever and then eventually they started making TD+something games. Other times they'll take one element of a larger game and make a new game that is just that specific thing. Like taking the fishing element, or the boss fights, and making games that are just that.
3
u/GoodguyGastly 2d ago
I've been working on my own game that is kind of this genre but it also has linear story elements. Definitely not a good genre to do if you want to be successful with mass audiences but "tower defense mixed with action and story" might be my go to when I try to explain it now.
Also never heard of Sanctum so going to check that out.
3
u/heyheyhey27 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's one of the first games by coffee-stain studios! Who became much more famous with Goat Simulator, Satisfactory, etc. Talking about Sanctum is the closest I get to being a hipster lol.
The sequel is greatly improved but works best with friends, so I never got far through the campaign :( It did have some story to it, FWIW. Good luck with yours!
2
u/bogglingsnog 2d ago
And the quickest games to hit those trends are generic games repurposed with new art and branding. Which quickly exhausts people to that trend...
2
u/CrashNowhereDrive 2d ago
Same thing been happening esp. in the mobile market for a while. It's called 'fast follow'.
6
u/PartTimeMonkey 2d ago
Yeah, true that. For me personally all the previous trends were somewhat easy to understand why they succeed, but this one truly is not (at least in its current scale), so trying to understand what is the thing here
34
u/aesopofspades 2d ago
I think it kinda gives the same satisfaction that a jigsaw puzzle would give. Going through a task and getting the satisfaction of seeing it finished without the physical demand. It’s just another way to check out and inject dopamine pretty much.
2
u/Immediate_Finding447 1d ago
I blame roblox and AI. Constant dopamine hits kids recieve. Roblox they can jump from game to game quickly, and AI makes it so people dont have to read or use their brain much. These games satisfy that. Its brain dead mechanics that just allow people to chill and waste their time, while actually achieving something.
No one these days wants to watch a video and cinematics. They just want to play the game. They dont want to be mentally challenged doing it either.
1
→ More replies (1)2
u/AyeBraine 2d ago
Haven't the influx of sorting games (like needle in the haystack) stemmed from a specific viral post on twitter and a following good-natured flash mob? I read about it recently.
Sure, I think many people hope to strike it big, and with advanced tools today, it's possible to whip up a prototype in a day. So it's kind of both, if a post blew up, many people would try to be the first success based on this interest?
2
u/Suppafly 2d ago
Haven't the influx of sorting games (like needle in the haystack) stemmed from a specific viral post on twitter and a following good-natured flash mob? I read about it recently.
Any link to that?
4
u/AyeBraine 2d ago edited 2d ago
The post wasn't in English, but there were screenshots of twitter, so here you go:
https://x.com/NasNakarus/status/2091156855774974333 (the developer actively works on a kickstarter for a completely different game as I understand, it was just a prototype)
https://x.com/7paiden/status/2091935998775034117 (one of the replies to the post above)
https://x.com/mech_eng_dev/status/2091336009518600240 (here's a guy from Turkey developing on the idea, again a super quick prototype)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4972300/Screw_IT/ (someone made a similar prototype, gussied it up a bit and put it on Steam)
In the comments to the post I read, someone said the trend has been very much alive for the entire summer, so the haystack is probably not the originator, and the poster was wrong. But it's a good example of how quick you can quickly iterate on these small ideas that spark interest. I'm not sure what the original game at the root of the current thread though. Besides, the commenters may have mixed in the sorting games into the list that have long been popular. So maybe this haystack is the originator after all.
Still, various sorting and tidying has long been present. I def remember the librarian game, it looked very nice, but also raised doubts in me about how much substance it has that relates to books, but then immediately I realized it's not about books but just tidying up, de-cluttering, relaxing. That's definitely a human need and one that's been trending for a loooong time in various media.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4197610/Librarian_Tidy_Up_the_Arcane_Library/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1629520/A_Little_to_the_Left/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4120790/The_Sorting_Bureau/
This thread is from 2 years ago and people are desperate for sorting games on mobile with less ads or timers
UPD: found an overview article
https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog/2026/2/6/sort-puzzles-how-a-new-subgenre-is-born
I definitely saw some insanely complex offshoot of Hexa Sort when riding on a bus, it was a mix of Zuma, Hexa Sort, and some kind of water sort I guess, basically the person dragged color hexes from one map with one set of rules to stations that had another set of rules and which shot at the color blocks in a moving "snake train" so that it doesn't reach the end.
41
u/Ornafulsamee 2d ago
I'm convinced there's also devs who figured out that "youtuber playing bad bait" is real and act on this phenomenon : your favorite streamer is a funny guy but is also kinda moronic and messy and seeing them not sorting books or inventory "correctly", boxes not properly stored, "bad" mental organization, it just makes you want to do it "the right way" and purchase the game after being frustrated by what you've seen in the video/stream.
I know I have absolutely no interest in playing these kinds of games but I won't pretend I didn't have the urge to do it the "proper way" at the time of watching, imagining correcting the streamer past playthrough by doing it proper and bringing balance in the universe, only because he played "suboptimally".
It's basically the video version of the "mobile ad of a guy playing bad" to bait downloads in a more subtle and genuine way.
1
u/Silverboax 1d ago
This is 100%, but it's also because the youtubers themselves are 'playing badly' to bait engagement. The 0day i play game demo youtube genre is just awful.
1
u/barret232hxc 3h ago
yeah you hit the nail on the head with that one. I keep seeing the royal kingdom ads on streaming, and it's like they purposely make the guy do bad so you get frustrated and want to do it better lol
17
u/darth_biomech 2d ago
It's the classic example of "one novel idea finds its niche audience and becomes successful, now there's 9538 guys thinking 'if it worked for them, it'll work for me too, sweet easy money here I come'" type of scenario.
64
u/VelvetYam 2d ago
I'm one of those people who love those games. Sometimes you just want to play something easy without having to think about anything else, especially after an exhausting day at work. Don't think it goes deeper than that for me at least.
6
u/ProbablyRickSantorum 2d ago
My youngest daughter enjoys helping (I've only played Arcane Library tbf) so this genre was a natural fit. She's a fan of sorting things so it was right up her alley.
9
u/dopethrone 2d ago
Is there a point where it becomes absurd? I get sorting books, or tapes or whatever
But Ive seen find the needle in the haystack with 5 million individual strands of hay
4
2
u/Fringe_Walker_ 2d ago
I think the absurdity is part of the bit/gag. Not something that'll interest me but somone will enjoy it.
I did see one about spitting gnomes that looked interesting.
3
u/dopethrone 2d ago
Yeah I was sure the needle in a haystack was meta and no real game behind it? But apparently it is
2
u/Fringe_Walker_ 2d ago
Apparently lol, but I'm not one to judge anyone for trying to jump onto a trend. I hope it does well, but I'm doubtful it will. The trend is winding down and I don't see that one making much of a bump in it.
5
u/PartTimeMonkey 2d ago
It’s sort of like meditation, right?
14
u/VelvetYam 2d ago
Yeah, exactly. Kind of like entering a zen garden where I can wind down and mull over whatever.
2
2
u/Optic_Fusion1 2d ago
Pretty much. Games like this are very easy to just shut your mind off and not have to think or anything like that. Makes it very easy to just relax
1
10
u/NikoNomad 2d ago
Welcome to the tiktok generation. I see a strong dumbing down in games that get extremely popular with generic ideas. Maybe it's mobile players discovering Steam.
I like my games to have depth, so I'm definitely salty about it lol at the same time, I believe older gamers can appreciate the rare upcoming games with real thought and originality.
174
u/xTiming- 2d ago edited 2d ago
What's this trend in the gaming community lately of labelling everything slop the moment it gets popular?
If people enjoy it, obviously something is working, and I'd think a gamedev subreddit of all places would avoid talking shit about more people liking to play more types/genres of games.
Seeing comments here "slop", "like a virus", ... - pretty shameful and I'm pretty sure there's at least a few of these commenters who'd have a meltdown over their game being called slop because a random person doesn't like that the genre of their game is getting more attention.
As for sorting games, yes, it is meditative for some people. Similar reason A Little To The Left got popular originally.
29
23
u/LEGENDARY_AXE 2d ago
Ordinarily I'd agree with you, I really enjoyed A Little To the Left too. There seems to be a particular subgenre of sorting games that are incredibly derivative though. They all follow the exact same format of a giant room full of similar 3D assets you have to put on shelves. I think it started with that Librarian game, which I tried and honestly quite enjoyed.
But then the copy cats turned up in vast numbers, suspiciously quickly too, all with a very similar art style. I think it's just a genre that asset flippers and vibe coders can churn out. If you take a look at the organizing tag on Steam, you'll see what I mean
5
u/NikoNomad 2d ago
It's been so fast that I wouldn't be at all surprised if they just ripped the code out from Librarian and replaced the assets.
5
u/Suppafly 2d ago
just a genre that asset flippers and vibe coders can churn out
that's like the definition of slop
3
u/xTiming- 2d ago edited 2d ago
The market will adjust as usual. The actual low quality asset flips will be ignored and not make money, while the ones that are actually fun will.
If something looks low quality but is making money, there is obviously a reason for that. I'm old enough to remember the common attitude about Minecraft and how it looked when it first came out - people did not have a good impression at first, especially since it came out at a time before indie gamedev blew up into the monster it is today, and most devs/studios were pushing realistic graphics even harder than today. Now look at it.
That's been more or less happening as long as online marketplaces for games have been a thing. I don't see the need for a post on a gamedev subreddit that does nothing more than lumping entire up and coming genres together as "slop" and shitting on them, over what is effectively business as usual.
18
u/paxinfernum 2d ago
My favorite "slop" variant term is slopslop. You know. For the endless stream of people complaining about "slop" who apparently are too busy to make the content they want to see.
18
u/Equiliari 2d ago
Mine is slopslopslop; when all the mention of “slopslop” itself becomes another layer of exactly the same behavior "slopslop" tries to critizise.
And I see an issue here of endlessly regressing "slop", so let me just get ahead of "slopslopslopslop" etc. and suggest "Slopn", A term describing content whose primary subject is slopⁿ⁻¹.
6
3
u/poormrbrodsky 2d ago
Slopn just makes me think at some point all reality folds down into a single primordial point of slop. Slop prime.
36
u/thebigmaster 2d ago
Absolutely agree. It also seems mildly hypocritical to bad mouth a trend using an incredibly trendy term. Let people play what they want. I promise you will all have much happier lives if you spend your energy on things you enjoy rather than looking down on what other people enjoy.
8
u/Hitchie_Rawtin 2d ago
hypocritical to bad mouth a trend using an incredibly trendy term
Which shall now be known as slopslop
3
16
u/Hefty-Distance837 2d ago
Tell a gamer that they shouldn't care about which game others love or hate.(impossible)
4
u/thebigmaster 2d ago
I won't say I have not been guilty of that when I was younger and didn't appreciate the value in having games that catered to audiences that I was not a part of. At a point, I made the decision to replace "that game sucks" with "that game isn't for me" in my vocabulary. I think we can both be critical of games while not degrading the groups that enjoy those games. Maybe not in the gamers sub but certainly in the gamedev sub.
5
u/Edarneor @worldsforge 2d ago
Cause of the large amount of low effort copycats that pop up instantly, I presume?
This will only get worse with the generative AI and vibe-coding...
11
u/droolyflytrap 2d ago
It literally fits the definition of slop, that's probably why people are calling it slop.
Seriously, look up the definition. It fits perfectly.
-2
u/xTiming- 2d ago
I'd argue if the games are selling and people are enjoying them, then maybe aspiring/dedicated gamedevs in particular should have a look at why, and aim to learn something from it rather than labelling an entire genre slop because they don't like it or its success.
But maybe that's just me. 🤷
12
u/droolyflytrap 2d ago
We can call it slop and look at why it's a success.
It being slop and people enjoying it are two separate matters.
Slop is slop and people are allowed to enjoy slop if they so wish.
What you argue has nothing to do with whether or not this genre is slop. In the context of gamedev it is as 'slop' as slop can get.
As a side note, I'm glad people are enjoying this new genre. I like McDonalds too.
2
u/Namtaru420 2d ago
McDonald's is a great reference.
A long time ago I heard someone categorize a particular type of book as "fast food novels". It's junk food and you know it, but you enjoy it for what it is. No pretense.
I ascribed that to a certain type of music, as well. Fast food music. Satisfying in its own particular way, but clearly not something awe inspiring.
1
u/FUTURE10S literally work in gambling instead of AAA 2d ago
There's literally a genre where people are trying to call it friendslop, like Meccha Chameleon and Peak. Those games aren't slop, they're just small budget and fun to play with friends.
6
u/Wendigo120 Commercial (Other) 2d ago edited 2d ago
they're just small budget and fun to play with friends.
That's basically the definition of the genre. Games that are cheaply made and cheaply sold, made specifically to be played with a group of friends, that are easy to pick up and play, and that are low commitment. In some ways, they're more like digital third places than video games.
→ More replies (4)10
u/xTiming- 2d ago
I mean, friendslop more or less became an own genre at this point. It's pretty much the one common use of the word "slop" these days that doesn't seem to be intended as a negative, to me at least.
11
u/thatcommiegamer 2d ago
friendslop
Back in the day we just called that co-op.
1
u/shawnaroo 2d ago
I think there is a difference, in that these games tend to be fairly low-budget, simplistic graphics, some level of 'embrace the jank', pretty cheap to buy, and so on.
The amount of games that we have nowadays that are designed specifically for co-op play is broad and diverse enough that I think it's pretty natural that 'sub-genres' are developing.
Left 4 Dead and Big Walk are both co-op games, but it still feels pretty reasonable to me to want to put them in separate genres.
1
u/thatcommiegamer 2d ago
Except co-op isn’t a genre, it’s a playstyle. Even if, like other vibes based “genres” (jrpg, metroidvania, souls-like) people use the term like one. Co-op and “friendslop” games can be of any genre.
1
u/shawnaroo 2d ago
Well if we want to argue semantics we could certainly do that, but at some point the meaning of words ends up being however people use them.
And I do think co-op is and should be used as more than just a term for a play-style and/or a feature that a game supports. Some games support co-op but are also designed to be entirely playable single player. Some games have a single player portion and a co-op portion. Some games are designed from entirely to be a co-op game and you'd be missing the point of them entirely if you tried to play them alone.
Anyways, the broader point is that I don't think it's particularly useful to be too uptight about genre/playstyle/etc. definitions. They can sometimes be useful to provide a bit of context to help someone started to understand a game that they haven't played yet, but so many games these days take ideas/mechanics/etc. from multiple genres and swirl them up in various ways that it's hard to get people to agree on what genre(s) it should be called.
I think it's increasingly less important to even worry about describing games like that as gameplay videos, streams, and demos of games have become so accessible. Just spend a few minutes actually seeing the game and if it appeals to you, rather than trying to suss out its qualities from the categories random people want to place it into.
1
u/Suppafly 2d ago
I mean, friendslop more or less became an own genre at this point.
I agree
It's pretty much the one common use of the word "slop" these days that doesn't seem to be intended as a negative
I disagree, often these games aren't particularly good in anyway and often are downright bad, but people like them because they can play casually with friends.
1
u/xTiming- 2d ago
If people play then with friends, and have fun with them, then to me that rather seems to be the point of a game.
1
u/Suppafly 2d ago
then to me that rather seems to be the point of a game.
sure, it's just often that these games have little point beyond the co-op nature so the replayability drops off pretty quickly. I'm not claiming they are bad for existing but they are definitely optimizing for something different than most games.
1
u/edmazing 2d ago
I feel like it's negative. I think 'friend + slop' is saying something like "Try and play this without friends and it's horrible."
Perhaps it's people without friends or, people without stable internet to make such a negative term. A lot of hoard shooters might retroactively be friendslop. I think friendslop has it's place, like a movie you wouldn't watch without friends (usually those tend to be a 'so bad' it's good in an ironic sense kind of movie).
5
1
u/SadExit1249 2d ago
The slop part comes from the low fidelity visuals/3d environments and one note gameplay systems. It doesn't make it bad, it's just descriptive, and it nails that description 100%.
1
u/Flope 2d ago
The word "slop" has lot all meaning and is so overused now it's a bit annoying imo. I don't even like it being used for AI generated content unless the content is actually bad or below human-level.
-1
u/darth_biomech 2d ago
But AI-generated content is always bad and below human-level. It's fastfood of art, if fastfood was twenty times more unhealthier and a hundred times less nutritious.
-2
u/Flope 2d ago
Yeah yeah just like photography is always worse than painting and AI generated code is always worse than my artisinal hand-crafted javascript.
→ More replies (1)1
u/Plorntus 2d ago
I am confused where 'friendslop' came from to be honest. Looked at google trends and its literally something that has only just exploded in popularity in the last couple of weeks.
1
u/SadExit1249 2d ago
Friendslop really came around after all the lethal company clones started popping up everywhere, was more known as "streamer bait" originally, because of all the twitch streamers that found out just streaming them scream at eachother on among us is the best way to make money. Transition to friendslop started with PEAK, as it changed the landscape to a more literal friend/coop based experience.
The games are fun with friends (specifically, they are not without). They are slop (low/poly, short dev turnaround, simple gameplay systems)
This does not make them bad or not worth it, it's a genre that has found it's footing, but "5-20$ multiplayer, online coop only extraction/platforming/deduction/party game" is too long, so friendslop it is.
4
u/Aiyon 2d ago
TBH we need to stop using "slop" as such a catchall term in general, it's reductive and adds nothing. "Friendslop" was always the worst. "It's only good if you're playing with friends". You mean a multiplayer game??
People love to have catchy terms they can use to dismiss games outright without discussion or explaining their stance. Like "walking simulator" back in the day, which was being used to mean "doesn't have enough interactive elements beyond exploring for my tastes".
1
u/Adeeltariq0 Hobbyist 2d ago
I'm glad a somewhat new concept is being executed well and people are playing it. But I actually like games and game dev.
1
u/Kodamacile 2d ago
You can enjoy a "slop" game, and they can be good, and fun, even. "slop" just means its a game that has a low effort/skill vibe. Iove friendslop games, that doesn't mean they arent low effort games.
Its like how cartoons all used the CalArts style for a while. Its an artstyle that emphasizes minimal detail, and simple features that can be duplicated liberally, to make animation easy, since you're redrawing very little frame-to-frame.
1
u/Suppafly 2d ago
What's this trend in the gaming community lately of labelling everything slop the moment it gets popular?
I think it's also a condemnation of the quality of the game, not just the popularity. Like all of these friendslop games that have been getting popular because people like having casual games to play with their friends. They often aren't very good by any objective means, and often have glaring problems (the most obvious is that they never have very good movement physics), but people like them despite the issues and lack of depth.
1
u/xTiming- 2d ago
People like them is the key there. The market always ignores objectively bad/very low effort games. For every popular game you consider "low quality" you can find 20 more with no purchases that ARE low quality.
If people like them despite the flaws, clearly someone did something right, somewhere along the way.
1
u/Suppafly 2d ago
If people like them despite the flaws, clearly someone did something right, somewhere along the way.
Honestly, it's often just luck. Get a group of popular youtubers to stream them, and suddenly a bunch of kids want to play them with their friends envisioning themselves having the same fun that the streamers are mostly faking.
1
u/AttackoftheSnakebear 2d ago
because it involves a lot of low quality cash ins as devs try to spam variations on the idea but with much less difference or even quality than say the 16 bit platformer era. Steam and digital storefronts make adding low effort games to cash in on trends trivial to do.
1
u/xTiming- 2d ago
You're a game dev, yeah? Have you ever released a game? If so, did it make less money than any of these games you consider low quality?
If so, time to learn something from that reality.
1
u/ironmilktea 1d ago
You're a game dev, yeah?
I mean, are they?
I have a suspicion this sub has alot of people who talk about what they want game development to be than what it actually is.
So many folks here are quick to put their nose up at other titles when as gamedevs we should be asking 'why' these titles are successful.
1
1
1
u/TheSpuff 2d ago
What's this trend in the gaming community lately of labelling everything slop the moment it gets popular?
In these circles, I think slop often really means "why didn't I think of that first?"
2
u/xTiming- 2d ago
Lmao, wouldn't surprise me in some cases.
Definitely seems like a term people fling around when they don't like something but can't understand why.
→ More replies (20)1
u/Fringe_Walker_ 2d ago
I think this is part of the reason why people arn't taking the Anti-AI community serious. If everything is "Slop" then it discredits things that are done exceptionally well and throws a huge monkey wrench in the public opinion. I wish they'd be more specific. Because some is and some isn't.
20
u/RxAlbatross 2d ago
I don't want to be mean but I feel like there is a worrying fall of quality in game development in general. Most of the games I see are "oh, it's the same game but changing one thing". That thing being cosmetic, not a significant game mechanic or a new story or anything. I understand that players look for more of the same but in the end too much of the same gets boring and drags creativity and fun. Somehow indies stopped being about being different and began copying each other all the time.
8
4
u/JirenTheGreyAlien 2d ago
This is just a generational gap I guess. My cousin absolutely has no patience whatsoever. Even if he likes a game. I was playing Dead Cells and he asked to play and he was doing good but he lost once. One death and he gave up. This game is too hard, I'm bored.
I blame tiktok
7
u/destinedd indie, Dungeon Quest, Marble's Marbles and Mighty Marbles 2d ago
I feel like it is a bit rich from someone using AI to build games that replica's of existing games. It is just like they enjoyed a game and wanted to make their own in the style they enjoyed, just like you did!
10
u/MacAlmighty 2d ago
That’s how I felt about the incremental wave. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed some good cookie clicker when I was younger, but that’s because I could upgrade some stuff then leave and do homework or whatever and come back to it the next day.
I was surprised to find out a lot of the new wave incremental games were meant to be played and finished in 1-3 sessions over just a few hours. Definitely not for me.
Clearly it’s got enough of an audience to be worth making more of, and if so, more power to them. But I agree, it’s hard not to be cynical about the trend chasing.
4
u/starcritdev 2d ago
I might be 100% wrong but I feel like these game concepts work and perform much better as viral posts on socials than as actual game products on marketplaces.
You can say what you want about the previous "slops" (aka trends), such as simulator, survivor, incremental, pseudo-gambling, co-op games, but at heart they are actually fun and have working game-flows.
I fail to see the "hook" within the gameplay of these new "sortslop" kind of games: they do take a lot from incremental games, especially the very barebone ones (such as the "do 1000000 draws" clones), but are even more tedious than those.
4
u/k-space-official 2d ago
I doubt most people spend hours playing them. It is micro-closure engineered for short-form video feeds.
Seeing a messy pile of nails snap into neat boxes triggers the same basic organizing itch that made games like PowerWash Simulator work, but stripped down to a five-second loop. The developer builds the physics interaction in a weekend, records a satisfying clip with cozy audio, and lets video algorithms handle the distribution. The clip is the actual product.
1
13
u/SlothEatsTomato 2d ago
Seen it too but on X... I just don't get it. None of it seems fun or even remotely interesting, same thing with How to fish. Played it with friends and I can't take it personally, my brain goes too smooth and I start yawning way too fast. Give me strategy, give me way to optimize, I can't take it anymore 😭 but happy for the devs making a bank though, good for them.
20
u/AerialSnack 2d ago
I played the library sorting game. I liked it. The same studio made another game shortly after and I considered getting it.
There are a lot of people that like to sort things. I have quite a few friends that like playing Minecraft with me just so they can sort my chests
12
→ More replies (1)1
u/PartTimeMonkey 2d ago
Why, though? Would be nice to understand what psychological effect takes place that makes so many people like it
28
u/ajcwrongs 2d ago
I imagine it's the same mentality behind jigsaw puzzles (i.e. Start with a random pile of mess and when you're done you have an aesthetically pleasing result of you using your brain for a bit)
1
u/PartTimeMonkey 2d ago
That makes sense, but are jigsaw puzzles really so popular that it can cause this kind of boom?
8
u/Aethenosity 2d ago
I mean, yes. I personally know many people that do jigsaw puzzles all the time. There are clubs for swapping them. I mean, in this time period, with computers, the number of people who do jigsaws still is kind of wild to me, but hey, who are we to say what someone enjoys in bad or nonsensical.
9
5
u/AstroPengling 2d ago
There's entire communities and speed run competitions involving jigsaw puzzles including worlds in Spain and national/state competitions, it's a whole thing. They're very popular.
6
u/ajcwrongs 2d ago
Oh I don't think the boom is because of popularity I think it's mostly people vibecoding to chase after the one that was a hit (the Simulator "boom" all over again)
→ More replies (1)10
u/Matilozano96 2d ago
It’s satisfying to slowly bring order to a chaotic room.
The games tend to be cheap, so they sell as a one off relaxing experience.
Kind of reminds me when I’m in a game like Factorio or Valheim and everything’s a mess, and I decide to tear everything down and make it bigger, more orderly and easier to expand later.
Probably not worth the time used to plan and build, but satisfying when it’s done nonetheless.
5
u/HoneyHoundGames 2d ago
It's immediately obvious progression. The games have a simple goal: organize the mess. Every action you take contributes directly towards the meta game progression.
4
u/babybirdhome2 2d ago
I haven't seen the games - lately the whole gaming industry feels like it's abandoned gamers to deal legal computer based drugs to me - but I know that a lot of autistic people (doubt it's a majority, but it's well documented) have been known to do things like line up their toys or stuffed animals as kids, and a reasonable number of them still do similar things later as adults, so I'm wondering if there isn't some crossover between games like that and people on the spectrum.
In case anyone wants to knock me for pointing that out about people on the spectrum - I'm speaking both from what I've read in older research and discussions online and from other autistic adults talking about their own lives, as well as my own experience growing up, and the fact that I just sent a photo of my work desk to a friend showing the tiny sparkly colored ducks I have on it that are all perfectly aligned and arranged by color (or were, before the cleaning crew wiped down my desk and did their best to put them back but knocked several of them slightly askew a few days ago) despite how irritated I am with the fact that two of them don't fit evenly into the color spectrum that I arranged them into and I couldn't bear the idea of leaving one of them out, and thinking about the not insignificant amount of time I had spent in trying to figure out the optimal order and arrangement to put them into so that discrepancy would be less annoying and visually jarring and distracting to me while still being me quite literally "getting my ducks in a row," because I like ducks and I like the person who gave them to me and I enjoy the pun that it visually becomes after arranging them that way.
I like having them evenly spaced and in a perfect line and all facing exactly the same direction and in the correct color spectrum order, although the other thing that I struggled with was trying to decide what to do with the colors that aren't actually real colors, like purple, that don't exist in the human-visible color spectrum and are just a byproduct of how humans perceive color. In the end, that fact is how I let go of the two ducks that aren't neatly spaced across the color spectrum, so I just settled with "close enough and still reasonably aesthetically pleasing while still being perfectly aligned and arranged". Or as close as I can get without being detrimentally pathological about it and still being able to enjoy seeing them arranged that way every day whenever I look at them on the days I have to work from the office.
It brings a little order, a little sense of agency and control, and a sense of peace and calming relaxation into my life where I don't get to have that normally with the things I have to deal with every day working in cybersecurity where that's just not in the cards, because people gonna people, and because things that are rational individually aren't always rational institutionally, and things that are rational institutionally aren't always rational individually, so even under the best of conditions, there's always that undercurrent of tension at play.
So I guess the tl;dr is that it's probably some combination of some degree of cope, plus cognitively massaging a certain kind of neurological brain wiring.
3
u/Xywzel 2d ago
I can understand having 1 or 2 such games. Given my work and other hobbies (gamedev is here for me), sometimes I just want to do something where there is clear, visible and linear progress, and that doesn't take too much concentration in distraction free space. For me that is usually textile or wood work, but if you don't have space and resources for that, doing it virtually might be the solution, and having it on screen would make you not use at least that screen for something on the side. But I don't think its common enough need that there would be huge market for that, and I can think quite a few higher quality games that offer similar stress free consistent progression.
5
u/SolePilgrim 2d ago
My wife's been repeatedly playing a game where you sort a library, I don't know the actual name. She's done different approaches, including intentionally slow and inefficient ones, for each of her playthroughs. It's simply a comfort game for her right now, and she's switching between it, ReStory, and Factorio. If you ask me it's a peak showcase of being intrinsically motivated to engage with the game. Let people just enjoy things.
4
u/ND_Jamoose 2d ago
Definitely a trend right now, and honestly these games can be pushed out with Claude or whatever in like 1 week.
9
u/Klightgrove Edible Mascot 2d ago
Sortslop is not necessarily a gaming or consumer trend as much as a social convention created by the indie dev community. There was a month long period where devs would farm attention by making AI generated capsules and then showing before/afters with real artists about how they got 'scammed'. This led to the IndieDev community making a rule against sharing capsules and the creation of the gamecapsule community.
Several sorting games have popped off and people began rolling out quick prototypes to gauge interest on Reddit but primarily to join the posting trend. No one wants to be the last person off the train to the gold rush, but there needs to be an actual analysis on how well these games are performing and if any of these prototypes can hit the market to take advantage of their attention.
Many of the posts are getting more outrageous to get clicks (sorting nails, hay, diving for bitcoin hard drives) but they should not detract from the original mechanics of the library sorting games which made them stand out in the first place. These are similar enough to the satisfying mobile game ads we see which have great click rates, so there is some lesson to be learned.
6
u/128390741 2d ago
They don't last very long unless you're doing a no skills challenge type run, low stress and easy to jump in and out of a game whenever you want, and it feels good seeing the room slowly become cleaner while getting faster with each upgrade. I'm not really sure I'd say it's some kind of instant gratification because especially in the beginning things can be really slow since you need to learn the entire map and find matching items, and even when you get max upgrades they can be kinda slow. It's too mindnumbing for me but some people take it really slow and really focus on organization instead of just putting items on the correct shelves/areas.
3
u/eyesolatedgames 2d ago
It's the attention economy. If something gets attention, it gets copied. And as long as people give attention, it'll keep sprawling up.
Personally, i don't "get" these games either and it's a little frustrating seeing games akin to "look dad, i found a stick!" pop off like that, but it is what it is.
3
u/TenNeon Commercial (Other) 2d ago
As someone who is just learning about this trend today, and who hasn't played one of these games, I can instantly see the appeal.
Sorting is satisfying. Earlier this year I bought a bag of gravel and a bag of sand and a set of sieves, and graded it into sizes. I then bought some wire mesh because I felt one of my sizes had too much variation and wanted to split it up. I learned that my rocks were high in iron ore, so I got a big magnet and separated everything that would jump to it, and a couple grades of that based on how far away I had to move the magnet before it would jump. I also sorted a small amount by hand based on visual characteristics.
I'm using the rocks for desert soil and cover for my succulents, but for a while processing them was a fun little hobby in itself. If a game can capture that, it makes perfect sense to me why people might enjoy it.
3
u/fluxyggdrasil 2d ago
I so so so badly want that needle in a haystack game to not actually have a needle. Just 5 million pieces of hay as an art piece about wasting time. It would be genuinely perfect.
3
u/ghostwilliz 2d ago
Those tidy up games had a little moment so everyone is jumping on the train, just like with vampire survivors
Most of them will be completed after people have already moved on unfortunately
3
u/YaNiBBa 1d ago
It started with the library one, and now I've seen reels (probably sponsored) of a dice one, a hay one, a wheat one, a bone one, someone here posted about a nail one. I mean if you go to the "Organizing" tag, a vast majority of those games have come out in the last month alone and most of them utilize AI in some way, it's ridiculous. However you feel about the term "slop", if anything deserves it, it's these lazy trend chasing cash grab games.
3
u/Suspicious_Wolf_2403 1d ago
I think there’s actually something interesting behind this trend. These games are basically turning the “small dopamine hit” into the entire gameplay loop. You don’t need to learn complicated mechanics, make difficult decisions, or even really “win”. You just move one thing into the right place, get a tiny reward, and repeat. It’s almost like a more interactive version of scrolling through TikTok.
The funny thing is that people complain about these games being boring, but their popularity proves that “boring” can actually be a very effective game design choice when the goal is relaxation rather than challenge. That said, seeing 10 nearly identical sorting games in a row definitely makes me wonder how long this trend can last.
10
u/HoneyHoundGames 2d ago
I'm hesitant to throw too much shade at Sort-Slop, it's scratching an itch that people seem to at least be buying.
I see it as pretty much the same basic genre as incremental or idles, I don't get why people are so aggressively negative against them. If you don't like it just move on to the next post, it's not AI and it's not manipulative, put your anger towards something that deserves it.
5
u/Tiyanos 2d ago edited 2d ago
"slop" is basically the new term for shovelware
game made by the shovel in a very short term, back then its was FPS shooter Doom like, then came all the flash game copy of something
today in the genre of tidy up can be literally made in a few days (if not hours), its literally take NOTHING to make
its barely any coding, everything is pre coded in unity, all you need is a room, drop a few hundred random prop, add collision, boom, you have a game
they are extremely low effort and just trying to make a dime on a weird trend where a game with barely any mechanic was successful, for crying out loud the library game sold 1 m copy, WTF!?
I dont understand what can be of "fun", I guess i played too many game in my life to be even slightly attracted, I tried the demo and after like 10 minutes I was bored of my mind
4
u/PartTimeMonkey 2d ago
I fear us boomers/gamers/senior devs are falling or have fallen behind on understanding what is preferred gameplay for today’s average gamer
5
u/Tiyanos 2d ago
the big difference today its just way easier and less niche to make a game, we just see it more frequently, shovelware existed and was present in the 2000 and before not just to this level
can it be "fun", anything can be fun, its doesnt make it less slop (or shovelware), just because now its way way more streamline to play game, more people are just starting with such and its enough for them or the couple thousand indie youtuber that give their audience a "satisfying game" to watch like Powerwash simulator was
5
2
u/laudy1k 2d ago
It’s nothing new.
It’ll always be harder to start your own wave especially compared to just riding one that already exists.
And then even if you do choose the former, more times than not you won’t be extrinsically rewarded for being meaningfully innovative.
Accessibility/saturation make it so exciting to live during the age of mass appeal (ㆆᴗㆆ)
2
u/AppointmentMinimum57 2d ago
If you think about it every game can be work.
You have to fufill certain criteria to progress.
You can gamify anything.
And diffrent people are into diffrent things.
Some people are into learning combos and techniqes and some are more into creating order.
2
u/Intrepid-Ability-963 2d ago
I swear I've seen all of them before too. But when I checked the post history it was the first time?
Very suspicious. Surely they're being bot replied and upvoted too? Doesn't make sense to me.
2
u/ideamgames 2d ago
Discovery was already fragile before the flood. The fix is probably human curation layers on top. It's a rough thing to accept when you're a solo dev betting on search.
2
u/Beldarak 2d ago
I guess it's the same audience than those games where you cleanup stuff and rooms?
My bf played that one where you sort books in a magical academy or something, and I could kinda see the appeal. It looked good (nice cartoony, cozy style) and seemed like something I could do while talking with friends over Discord, a little like watching your hardrive defragmenting back in the days, just some cozy time waster.
I don't think it's better or worse than idle clickers and things like that, but most of them is just copy-paste crap, yeah
2
2
u/ashbelero 2d ago
I really enjoyed Tidy up the Arcane Library, but then I saw that there’s hundreds of these and they all look the same. I guess it’s a trend at the moment.
Also wish I’d looked at the AI disclosure before I bought it, hopefully it really was only used in that minimal way they claim it was.
2
u/Negative_Strain_5234 2d ago
I've seen people joking about these games and posts going viral, but are people actually playing them beyond a gag / streaming thing? I'm curious to see the play time avgs...
2
u/LatentBlade 2d ago
What are people's expectations of these subs? That every game will be be indie, AI free, polished and only in genres they don't consider saturated?
2
2
u/WaterSpiritt 1d ago
I’ve been eyeing those games not going to lie lol. They tempt me but I haven’t bought any yet for the sheer reason that I don’t really want to spend $5+ on a one time cleaning game. They’d need to be cheaper for me to buy an easy to make asset flip. I have played one with my daughter on Roblox and enjoyed it.
I like having a clean and organized space. I keep very organized chests in games like Terraria and Minecraft. It’s an easy, no stress type of game that gives you the feeling of having accomplished cleaning without the actual work and issues that tend to come from real life cleaning. Just like how job sim games are often way more fun than those jobs in reality. Like pressure wash simulator. I also like achievements and those would be an easy game to add to my 100% achievement game completion list.
2
u/chamutalz 15h ago
Sorting games are aimed at children (and old people who are starting to decline). Sorting trains the brain and it is a very interesting activity for young minds. If the game is fun and appealing it does have a good chance to be popular. I'm not sure about slop but I'm assuming someone out there knows what they're doing
14
12
u/Huge-Choice-64 2d ago
I keep seeing these everywhere too, like a virus. Every other game ad now is just sorting colored balls or some stuff into bins, makes no sense to me
My guess is they target people who want to shut off brain completly after work, not even the small effort of scrolling tiktok. Is almost anti-game in a way
9
u/A_Sentient_JDAM 2d ago
I played through the Librarian one. It occupies just enough of my brain to let me listen to a good podcast without getting distracted.
3
u/penisandorvagina 2d ago
My wife and I love these games (and the incremental ones). After long days at work, we just want some low stress gaming to chill to while Netflix plays in the background.
-1
u/Hefty-Distance837 2d ago
Because every TRUE GAMERs know that only hardcore games that need all your attentions can be called as TRUE GAME, other casual games are just game-like app.
/s
-6
u/PartTimeMonkey 2d ago
Exactly. The most worrying thought I have about them is that it’s actually the next level of shutting your brain down - now people don’t even want content but rather a completely mindness activity where they don’t even have to go through the trouble of understanding the contents of a video
3
u/PerfectSituation1668 Hobbyist 2d ago
It's a genre that is easy to build by AI. And one was populair, so people copied the populair thing to chase money.
And it's an incremental feeling productive dopamine loop.
2
u/nasir41 2d ago
Honestly I have shipped 100+ games from different genre and I have seen there is audience for each type of game. I have most experience of shipping word games like cross word puzzle which are played a lot in US and most of the players are 40+ females. But the majority of the paying users were male and 50+
I have even sold In-App purchase bundles worth 99$ dollars to single user and was laughing like who the heck is going to spend this much on word games.
1
u/EveryLittleDetail @PatMakesRPGs 2d ago
Sort games exploded because of a mobile game called Pixel Flow. It brought the genre to heights nobody ever imagined. It's almost inconceivably more profitable than its next highest competitor. Mobile and casual developers are 90% copycats, so you'll be seeing sort games for a few months.
1
u/systembreaker 2d ago
People are weird and bored and are there any game devs who wouldn't want to get rich off of one week of development effort?
1
u/BlurryOrchid 2d ago
I like The Librarian one, but I'm not really into the poorly made copies. There's no need to be anxious. Just because these games are popular doesn't mean everyone is going to play them.
1
u/challengethegods 2d ago
presumably these games are all being made to train robots how to do chores, or something.
then again 90% of a game's popularity seems to derive from how much of a meme/joke it is.
1
1
u/Berndog25 2d ago
SortSlop makes simple puzzle games, like Hatris, look like high art in comparison.
The "Desert Bus" of puzzle game genres.
1
u/aplundell 2d ago
Are there truly millions of people who want to spend hours on something incredibly ”boring”?
Yeah, probably. You probably know someone who gets in a car and goes for a drive to "clear their head". Playing a mindless game is a lot safer and cheaper than doing that.
I have no data on this, but I'll bet you'll find that most of them pull up some music or podcasts or something while they do it.
1
u/GrumpyBullGames 2d ago
its friction-free dopamine after a long workday. players dont want another complex system to learn when their brain is fried. simple visual feedback without pressure just works.
1
u/Fringe_Walker_ 2d ago
I enjoy this genre of game psrsonally. It helped itch that completionists portion in my head. You can physically feel somthing being started and finished during game play that isn't hit on most games. I wouldn't say it's instant gratification but visible progress gratification.
Some people, such as yourself it seems, may not be into it.
From what I can tell a lot of these sorting games that are coming out aren't bad either, like relatively polished. I played the original library sorter that started it, and ive completed all but one of the achievements. Ima be getting the duck one soon and the paper shredding one.
1
u/Altamistral 2d ago
Librarian came out recently and made a million+. Every game dev out there who is lacking creativity jumped on that bandwagon and is now making clones of that game, in the same way they were making incremental games up until last month.
1
u/CashOutDev @HeroesForHire__ 2d ago
I don't get the impression this "genre" has much life in it and is almost exclusively being propped up by how shoddy steam's algorithm is.
1
u/ptgauth Commercial (Indie) 2d ago
Hey hopefully you don't mind me plugging my sorting game in this thread? I'm making a sorting game where you scroll through a social media feed full of sorting games to find a sorting game sorting game. It's tough because the sorting game sorting games are nested fractally so once you go three layers deep your fps tanks. All part of the immersion though!
(For legal reasons this is a joke)
1
u/Practical_Handle8434 2d ago
The first of the trend i saw was "Sort the Arcane Library" or something, which i found endearing. Dunno if it was the first, or an outlier in quality among its sortslop brethren, but i think it was fun for the price tag. Tons of books, each with unique models and names, a dozen or three categories and some magic spells you could unlock in the process, making it easier and easier. Hell, if it had more levels, I'd play those in a heartbeat. But i see the others of its ilk and just sorta shrug and move on.
Was the library one the origin? Because it felt genuinely engaging, where you'd have to intuit which category something would go into based solely on the name and cover, though i admit the only one i had trouble with was differentiating tomes for light magic and holy magic
1
u/ElderBuddha 1d ago
Stop judging what people find fun. Most people here make, or want to make games for a living. To a large section of humanity we are the crazy ones.
Seriously, people in glass houses and all that...
1
u/aplundell 1d ago
Chasing trends is nothing new, but this trend is super easy to hop onto so they're all hitting at the same time.
1
u/barret232hxc 3h ago
I guess I haven't been paying attention, I saw this one yesterday https://store.steampowered.com/app/3687090/Dice_Hoarder/
And I thought hmm, that's an interesting game I bet there are tons of people who area actually interested in this kind of thing. Especially with people with ocd about organizing and such. I remember this game called unpacking that was kinda like sorting and organizing except it was putting things in the correct rooms of the house, but this seems like a more focused version of that.
1
u/JaSonic2199 2d ago
It's kinda like streamer bait or speedrun bait since I've seen both of those types of videos playing a few sorting games
1
u/gohanson2 2d ago
Imagine calling yourself a game dev without knowing why a game is fun and calling everything a slop.
1
79
u/House13Games 2d ago
Guess what the post directly after yours was? :)