Review: Stacking

A matryoshka doll, also known as a Russian nested doll or a babushka doll, is a set of dolls of decreasing sizes placed one inside the other.

-Wikipedia

After reading that definition you're ready to play video games, right? Me too.

Double Fine Productions manages to center Stacking around the most obscure but genius idea in recent memory. Pairing great visuals with simple gameplay, the game places you in a world of animated Russian nesting dolls with the central story focusing on a family of chimney sweeps. Yep, chimney sweeps. You play as the smallest doll in the family, Charlie Blackmore, and are pitted with the task of saving your loved ones from an evil industrialist known as The Baron, who's captured and forced them to work for him.

In this third-person puzzle/adventure game you are able to stack inside and unstack out of dolls. The only catch is that in order to stack into the body another doll, the doll must be one size larger than you are. Each doll has a different special ability that you must utilize to solve puzzles throughout the game. For example, early on you must stack into a doll with a key on his head to open a gate. And later, into a bird that flies so as to gain access to an open window. Finding solutions to these various challenges gets you closer to reuniting your family.

Complementing the main adventure are several added elements that add to the lasting appeal of the game. In addition to multiple solutions to each puzzle, I found myself searching for unique dolls to unlock and actually spent quite an absorbent amount of time attempting the many side quests.

Stacking goes for a cool $14.99 and is well worth it. Playing a game with the focal point based on such an uncommon idea was refreshing. I believe it's this outside-the-box concept that makes the game so appealing.