Nukezilla Review: Stacking

[This review has been stacked. After each section, unstack a layer to read on]

Leave it to Double Fine productions to continue making brilliant games around amazingly different premises. Matryoshka dolls (or Russian nesting dolls, or egg dolls, or stacking dolls; whatever you happen to call them) are a piece of kitsch not talked about much today. Apparently they were all the rage in the 70s and 80s, as my parents had a few lying around the house at that time. Never once, when I was messing around with these dolls (as I did a lot when I was a kid), did I think I’d be amazed by a videogame based on them. Then along came Stacking.

In Double Fine’s newest downloadable title, you play Charlie Blackmore, son of a coal miner who’s stack (read: family) is on hard times. The stack’s father has run up huge amounts of debt, and the only way to repay it is to have his children make some cash on the side. Unfortunately that means the kids (save for runt Charlie) have all been kidnapped by The Baron to be put to work in his various vessels around the world.

Stacking takes you throughout a beautifully rendered industrial-age Britain, caught in the grip of a madman named The Baron. The Baron is a man of extravagances: he likes his blimps doubled, his trains stacked on top of each other, and his coal raked into furnaces cheaply and efficiently. So he turns to child slavery. It’s up to Charlie to put a stop to this reign of forceful underage employment, but how?

Charlie has a power. He can control people’s minds, bending them to his will. The power is manifested in his ability to “nest” other dolls around him. As Charlie is the smallest doll type, he can jump into the next biggest doll (usually children), and then use them to jump into bigger and bigger dolls.

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Each doll that he jumps into has a specialized ability, sometimes used to finish a puzzle. The dolls’ abilities range from opening doors and break dancing, to farting and flirting with men. Using the dolls’ abilities is key to solving the puzzles of Stacking. Each level has a handful of missions based around rescuing one of the Blackmore brood from back-breaking child labor.

Each mission can be completed in different ways. For instance, to ruin someone’s animal exhibit you can either cause chaos by nesting in one of the animals and scaring patrons away, or breaking various parts of the scenery through a well-timed mishap. It’s rare to see a puzzle game like this have such an added value with these different solutions. Once completed, a puzzle gives way to a charming cutscene showing the aftermath, and the story continues, with no need to find additional solutions.

Should you wish you can return to any puzzle to finish the other solutions. Perfecting every solution in the game gets you closer to the all-important 100% completion. That’s achieved by completing the game, figuring out each solution, and finding level-specific dolls along the way. Your progress is recorded in a train station backroom by a transient hobo you befriend at the beginning of your adventures.

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The puzzles range from fairly easy to oh-dammit-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that, with a rather gentle difficulty curve. To assist you in finding solutions you’re given three hints on the start menu. The first two hints nudge you in the right direction, while the third blatantly tells you the answer. Luckily the hints never become a crutch.

With a game based around intricately painted dolls, you’d expect the aesthetics to be top notch. That’s very true here. Late 19th century Britain is reduced to a miniaturized playset. While the architecture and character designs are period-specific, at various times you’ll see a giant playing card leaning up against a wall, a row of matches acting as a barrier, or a doll holding a giant toothbrush. These little flourishes remind you that you’re still in a doll’s world, while retaining the post-industrialized look and feel.

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I’m glad I get to review Stacking during this period of Nukestravagant love. This is the first game I’ve played this year that I’ve truly fell in love with. The puzzles are delightful, everything about the aesthetics just pops to life in front of your eyes, and it’s actually got a pretty entertaining story laced with 19th century political satire and fart jokes. A useful help system is put in place to help out younger/less-experiences puzzlers, but those that like a good head-scratcher will enjoy it just as much. It’s a great mass-appeal game that Double Fine deserved to make, and they made it well.