Stacking

Man, the sheer amount of games that I have purchased and experienced thanks to Humble Bundle is getting pretty hilarious at this point. But hey, as a frugal person one you obliterate the price barrier the way that Humble Bundle does I almost have no defense against taking a tiny risk and buying some of this games.

Stacking is an adventure puzzle game that is very tongue in cheek and clearly design from to bottom to be a fun and engaging experience for the player. The game was developed by the brilliant folks over at Double Fine, who also developed such gems like Psychonauts, and was published by both Nordic Games and the now bankrupt THQ. If you are so inclined you can fine the game on consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as the PC on all operating systems.  

Its very hard to talk about Stacking given that its conceptually a very unique game of a couple of levels, but I'll give it a go anyway. At a glance, its an adventure puzzler, but I'm sure as you have noticed there is something quite unique about the characters and the uniqueness has a direct impact on the games mechanics. You see, the entire world of Stacking is populated with matryoshka version of everything and that is used as the key mechanic in the game. In case you don't what matryoshka dolls are, they are the dolls that fit into each other with each larger doll swallowing all the smaller one.

See. Just like that.

It is on this nature of the dolls that Double Fine built the entire puzzle mechanic of their game. In each level there are few unique characters and some common characters that are found across the entire game each with an ability that varies in usefulness that you have to use in order to solve the challenges the game throws at you. The thing is, you can't just jump into anyone, you have to do it in order of size. Since the character you play is the smallest doll in the game that makes you the start/end of the chain so that you can jump into the doll you need at the time to do what you need to get done. In some cases though, the mere act of jumping into another doll is the challenge in itself. As a result all the puzzles and their solutions seemed very organic to me, and while there some thinking involved it is rewarding as opposed to punishing with the solutions being "logical" as opposed to the standard method that is found in adventure games where you have to do random things in the hope that you might happen upon what the developer though was the "correct" way to solve the puzzle. Additionally, the icing on top of the cake for me was the fact that the puzzle in Stacking have multiple solutions, meaning that there are multiple right answers to the same problem that reward people for thinking differently and encourage you to have a think about more than one solution for the puzzles you are given.

With this strong mechanic design in the game is easy to see why I liked it. But strong game design can only take a game so far. Stacking has more to give the player though aside from the core of the game. I instantly fell in love with the game once and I watched the trailer and it wasn't the mechanics that won me over, it was the sheer amount of character the the game was just dripping that made me want to buy it and play it right now. A big part of this charm much like the mechanics also derives the choice to render all characters as matryoshka dolls. Its just adorable watching all the characters just waddle around doing all sorts of things like seducing, shooting, screaming or farting on each other. The second part is the tongue in cheek nature of it all with the game just have a fun and overall silly nature very similar to the Lego games, Tiny Thief and I'm not really sure what else. Whats important for you to know is that the game is just endearing and adorable. An on top of that the pseudo-classical music and the story line that you playing an underdog trying to rescue his family from a an evil baron and you have the making of a very fun game.

 

I loved playing Stacking, it was an adventure game that reminded me of older giants in the genre like the various games that LucasArts had made in the eighties due to how fun it was. What is more important is that the game gave me entirely new memories because of how original it was in its design and execution. The game didn't drag on either, it was action packed, straight forward and gave me a wonderful nine hours of gameplay to beat the core of the game and the additional downloadable content. This is a game you have to get if you if you want to have fun and its a great way to introduce people to videogames if you are hoping to find some titles to ease them in. Happy Stacking!