There are two ways to know a saga: knowing the order the films came out, and knowing the order the story happens. Almost nobody has both, and that's exactly what this game measures.
The rule
Five titles from one saga appear shuffled. You tap them one by one in the order you think is right; tapping a placed title takes it back out. Then you confirm, and the verdict says how many titles are correctly placed — with the year shown for the ones that aren't.
Two modes, and this is where it gets interesting:
- Release order — the cinema one. Easy for a saga followed live, tricky as soon as spin-offs appear.
- Chronological order — the story one. This is where prequels, flashbacks and parallel narratives undo everyone.
Every universe, playable
The game feeds straight from our official extended universes, the site's signature feature: MCU, Star Wars, DC, Alien, X-Men (Fox era), Conjuring, Fast & Furious, Middle-earth, MonsterVerse, and more.
Each of those universes was built by hand and every title verified one by one, with both of its orders. This isn't a list scraped from somewhere: it's the same data behind the site's tickable checklists, the ones where you track your progress through a saga.
The boundaries we had to settle
Splitting a franchise into universes forces debatable calls, so we may as well own them. Here, the Fox-era X-Men form their own universe: Deadpool, Deadpool 2, Logan and The New Mutants belong there. But Deadpool & Wolverine sits in the MCU, because that's where the film takes place.
Same logic for DC: a single universe on the site, but two continuities, the DCEU (from Man of Steel to Blue Beetle) and the DCU (since Creature Commandos). The game never mixes them in the same round, because ranking two parallel stories would make no sense.
Then actually tick them off
The game is a test; the universes are a tool. On a universe page, every film and show can be ticked, the order switches between chronological and release, and you get a count of what's left. That's more useful than a list on a forum.
Chronological or release: which for a first watch?
It's the first question anyone faces with a universe, and the honest answer depends on the saga — not on a general principle.
- Star Wars: release order, no hesitation. The central reveal of The Empire Strikes Back makes no sense if the prequels already gave it away.
- MCU: release order too. The saga was written to be seen that way, and the rare prequels (like Captain Marvel) are designed as flashbacks.
- Alien: release order for the tension, chronological if you want to follow the internal logic of the colonisation. Both hold up.
- Middle-earth: chronological works well, because The Hobbit is a self-contained, earlier story with no reveal to protect.
The rule we draw from it: prefer release order whenever a saga contains a major reveal, chronological when it tells a continuous story with no structural twist.
The case of shows inside a film saga
Modern universes mix formats, and that's where most lists found online go wrong: they forget the shows. Here, Alien: Earth sits in the Alien universe, The Rings of Power in Middle-earth, Monarch in the MonsterVerse, Peacemaker in the DC universe. A saga doesn't stop at the cinema.