6 indie sorting games that force you to find order from chaos

If there’s one thing I love, it’s feeling like I’m organized and on top of things. I am capable of thriving in chaos, but I would rather not, and that’s true when it comes to the games I choose to play as well. There are a ton of games out there to scratch the organizational itch, but perhaps none do it better than ‘sortslop’, a term I first saw used by Indie Game Joe on X.

These are games that throw you into a room, confront you with a pile of stuff that is chaos personified, and a bunch of empty slots for you to put them in. They’re a constant source of organization dopamine, letting you gradually reduce the chaos and create some order from it. They often let you unlock upgrades too, giving you a little of that roguelike sense of progression.  It’s an addictive combination. 

This niche genre of games is multiplying at a staggering rate, but some are better than others. If you’ve been looking for something to give you that dopamine hit while remaining low-effort, here are some sorting games that I think you’ll love.

Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library!

This is the game that started the obsession for me, and it has been a slippery slope ever since. In Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library, you’re thrown into a locked magical library that feels straight out of Hogwarts, and it’s up to you to refill the shelves in a way that makes sense. Books belong on certain shelves, although the Dewey Decimal System apparently doesn’t exist in this mystical universe.

The upgrades in Librarian are all magic-based, offering you the chance to unlock spells that will help with your sorting efforts, but there are also hidden keys to find that unlock other boosts, such as the ability to jump or sprint. I wouldn’t recommend running in any real-life library, but it definitely comes in handy in this virtual one.

Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library was released in April 2026, and it immediately became a hit with cozy and indie game fans. If you want to dive into the stacks of disorganized books, you can get the game on Steam.

Supermarket Chaos

Supermarket Chaos is basically the same thing as Librarian - as all of the games on this list are - but the setting is different. This time, you’re in an inexplicably disastrously disorganized supermarket, and you need to stock the shelves. It’s almost as if the delivery driver failed to secure the pallets before crashing through the wall, spewing the contents of the truck all over the shop. 

Each item belongs in a specific department; some items take up more than one shelf while others don’t, and it’s up to you to figure out what goes where in a way that makes sense. If you get really anal, you can spend hours putting yourself in the mindset of a customer, trying to figure out what is likely to sell more and where it needs to go to maximize profits. None of it matters, of course, but it’s too easy to trick yourself into thinking it does. 

And best of all? Supermarket Chaos is multiplayer, so you can drag your friends along and argue over cheese placement and debate their merchandising choices. Supermarket Chaos is out now on Steam.

Too Many Toys

If food isn’t your thing, but you still want to be involved in stocking the shelves in some kind of shop, then Too Many Toys might be the sorting game choice for you. Instead of a supermarket, you’re in a toy shop. Instead of pizza and cheese, you need to find logical homes for guitars, toy cars, and plastic dinosaurs. We know how this works by now, right?

There are just shy of 6,000 toys to organize, a cat to pet somewhere in the building, a delightful wobble effect when you place things on the right shelf, and a mini train to ride that helps you get from one side of the store to the other without feeling like you’ve just run a marathon. Upgrades are available as you level up, making it easier to organize and find zen among the plushies. 

Too Many Toys isn’t out yet, but with its release set for August 28, 2026, you don’t have long to wait if this is something you want to try. You can wishlist the game on Steam. 

Cellar Keeper

If you want something more focused on a specific thing, or you played Supermarket Chaos and thought, “you know what, the wine section of this store was particularly fun to organize”, then Cellar Keeper is the obvious choice for your next sorting game. Cellar Keeper is all about wine, with close to 2,500 bottles of various vintages waiting in an old, forgotten cellar for you to drop in and find some order in the chaos. 

It’s not mentioned how long they’ve been waiting for you to arrive, but we can only assume they’ve all aged perfectly in the interim. Like Librarian, Cellar Keeper has a very handy map of the shelves that you can follow, helping you to figure out where each bottle rightfully belongs, and there are some upgrades available that can help speed up the process. 

Once you’ve mastered the layout in Cozy Mode, you can dive into Speedrun Mode, which removes the upgrade options and isn’t recommended until you know where everything goes. Either way, the game is available on Steam right now. 

Cleaning Up the Puzzle Gallery

If I’m honest, at first glance, Cleaning Up the Puzzle Gallery seemed like my idea of a nightmare. A bunch of famous paintings have been thrown onto the floor by an earthquake; inexplicably, they’re all actually jigsaw puzzles, and now you have to put 2,000 pieces back together again. Does this sound fun? No. Is it? Somehow, yes.

Set to a soundtrack of classical music, you get to enjoy works by Monet and Van Gogh, with a total of 87 paintings waiting for you to use your jigsaw skills to make them whole again. Or, if you want to be different, you can upload your own images and turn those into puzzles as well. It’s the same deal as all the other games listed here, but with the added issue that everything is in literal pieces. 

If you enjoy puzzles, or you want to curate your own art gallery of family photos (or more likely memes), you can download Cleaning Up the Puzzle Gallery through Steam.

Sort Them Ducks

Imagine this: You walk into a store that sells rubber ducks and, instead of finding them neatly arranged on the shelves, you find 4,000 ducks of various designs in a chaotic pile on the floor. You probably expected that by this point, but the idea of it being nothing but rubber ducks is somehow magical, and therein lies the appeal of this specific entry on this list. 

Of course, you can unlock upgrades, organize the ducks in their rightful positions around the store, and generally find calm, but the joy of Sort Them Ducks comes from the designs of the ducks themselves. Burger duck, strawberry duck, ninja duck, gnome duck… The list is seemingly endless, and they are all adorable. 

If you like cute things and the dopamine that comes from organizing them neatly on the shelves, Sort Them Ducks is definitely a sorting game you should add to your to-be-played list. You can get it on Steam right now.