Stacking

This game is fantastic fun. It's a puzzle game about Russian dolls (Matryoshka) set in an industrial revolution era. Contains a fair amount of humor and an engrossing atmosphere. While one solution to a problem is often really simple and straightforward, there is plenty of room for discovery if you want to discover every solution to complete each puzzle. There is a fair variety of side quests and even a hint system hidden in the menu if you really get stumped on a puzzle. The artwork is really what makes this game shine. It's very charming. Color me impressed. And the short cutscenes sprinkled throughout the game are generally quite entertaining and welcome. All in all, this is a simple, charming, and beautiful game. Don't expect a very challenging puzzler (although there are a few more involved puzzles), or a game featuring amazing gameplay, but if you want an engrossing adventure and fantastic world to discover and explore, this is a wonderful place to spend a few hours at a time exploring.

Stacking is a fun little puzzle game from Double Fine with a unique and quite simply charming aesthetic. It's a neat little package, with humour and character oozing out over the edges. That's the only thing, though, "little". It's not particularly challenging as a puzzle game, and even 100% completion is pretty easy going; but this isn't to say the puzzles aren't interesting and well-designed. Basically, if you're looking for a challenge, Stacking may come up a little short; but it's worth it for the world, the characters and the attention to detail that's just...absolutely charming.

It's a charming game, the main game mechanic is clever and unique. The interface is pretty well done, there's lots of different types of objectives and it's always clear what you need to do or collect. If you enjoy collectathon-type games you might like this. The main problems I have with this game, and why I'm dropping it after three hours, are: - The silent film clips are charming in the begining, but get old very quickly and seems they can't be skipped. - Most of the quest mechanics involve walking (sometimes pretty far) around and finding the right doll to use for a task, learning which dolls are which are integral to learning the game. - Most of the mini-quests are about doing the same thing over and over (these are voluntary completionist tasks though, most people won't do all of them or maybe ignore them completely). The quests themselves are OK. As previously mentioned most of them are about finding the right doll and performing their special action at a certain place, but some I'd say are almost impossible without using the built-in hints and when you're using the hints it's a lot like just following a manual in my opinion. I'd say you should get this if you enjoy goofy humour, collect-a-thons and don't mind walking around a lot. There's definitely some people who would really enjoy this game, but it's also really not for everyone.

I don't quite agree with other reviews on the length and challenge of the game. I've played for some hours, and have found solving both some main (first solution) and second (alternate solutions) puzzles not easy - some aren't finished - and I haven't finished the game. I think it has some nice challenge and length. The game has a creative design: there are these Russian dolls. Some are 'named' and help with the puzzles. You walk around and can play dolls you see, and 'stack' dolls one size larger so you're playing 5 dolls, of 5 sizes. The game is basically a puzzle game with atmosphere. For example, you find yourself on a cruise ship, with rooms such as the kitchen, where you need to solve puzzles, not classic puzzles but puzzles such as which doll to play and go to the right location. It has the same pro and con of Double Fine's Costume Quest, of having some simple and what can be tedious gameplay - you've checked the area dozens of times, check more - yes still play that grabs you and pulls you in. I'd say the reasons to play it are unique design, fun to explore, nice puzzles; the reasons not to are if you just don't care for the simple gameplay and repition of a lot of trying to find things. One note on gog.com's pricing - if I'm not wrong, $14.99 is the original game price and gog.com is selling it for that same price long after it's a new game; and it's been on sale for a fraction of that repeatedly. It seems too high now. It'd be easier to recommend at $10 or less, but will be worth the $15 to some players.