Release order and story order are not the same thing — see the play order page for why that matters on a first run.
This page is deliberately incomplete. Most of the Rusty Lake timelines online are reconstructions, and the reconstructions disagree with each other. What follows is only what is confirmed.
Confirmed anchors
| Anchor | What is confirmed |
|---|---|
| Servant of the Lake | Set in spring 1839, before the events of Rusty Lake: Roots. It is currently the earliest confirmed point in the series. |
| Roots, Hotel, Paradise | Cover earlier events and Vanderboom family history relative to the Cube Escape entries. |
| Newest ≠ latest | The nineteenth and most recent release sits at the front of the story, not the end of it. |
That is the whole confirmed set. Everything else — the ordering of the Cube Escape entries against each other, where The White Door and Samsara Room attach, how The Past Within's two halves line up — is not yet sourced to a standard this site will publish.
Why the gaps
The series tells its story across nineteen separate releases, most of which never state a date. Fan timelines fill those gaps by inference. Inference is often right and is still not a source, so it does not go on this page as fact.
What is being verified next
- Per-entry in-universe dates, where the games state them at all.
- The Vanderboom family sequence across Roots, Hotel and Paradise.
- Where the Cube Escape entries attach to the family line.
Each will be added here as it clears a second independent source.
Related
- Rusty Lake games in order — the release list, fully confirmed
- Servant of the Lake — the entry that opens the timeline
- All 19 games — the full catalogue
Not confirmed
We could not verify the following against a source we trust, so it is left out rather than guessed at.
- A complete ordered timeline of all 19 games. No single source has been cross-checked for it yet. This page publishes only the anchors that two independent sources agree on, and will be extended as each additional link is verified.
- Exact in-universe dates for entries other than Servant of the Lake (spring 1839).