Connecting the Dots in Stacking

In Stacking, the player character is the smallest Russian nesting doll in the world who can stack into others from behind and “bend them to his will.” Stacking is, at a basic level, a puzzle game where one uses many different abilities to get past an obstacle. But this game stands out because of how well it handles setting up the obstacles. Not only does it allow multiple solutions to the same obstacle but the solutions all have little dots of information and it leaves it to the player to connect them.

One of the best examples of this is in an early level that takes place on a ship. To get a family member out of forced labor, the captain must be persuaded to dock by making various cruise members complain to him. One of which is a professor exhibiting artifacts from Egypt. A cutscene upon first approaching the exhibit has the professor saying to his guards, “Keep a sharp eye out for any saboteurs,” who then reply saying they will make sure nothing gets broken and nothing leaves. “If anything goes missing or is broken, the exhibit will be delayed and the captain will hear of it!” The dialogue establishes clearly what one needs to do here.

One of the ways to get him to complain involves a model Sphinx that sits in the room. The game gives various bits of information throughout the ship on how to break that exhibit. Looking at the Sphinx itself, it appears to be made out of cheese, fitting in with the rest of the household item aesthetic of the game. Posters around the ship also convey this information, they say, “Come see the Cheese Sphinx.” One of these posters is hanging right above a group of rats on the first floor. There are also signs, when walking into the exhibit, of rats with a crossed out circle around them.

This information all connects to getting the rats to eat the cheese model. The rats are unable to be stacked into and controlled by the player, so they must go in there by some other means. There is a flute player who is sitting on a perch that will only come down if someone will play with him. Upon doing that, talking to him reveals that he can attract vermin. This piece of information is also revealed by a painting on the second floor by another group of rats, which depicts the man playing his flute and rats following behind him.

The rats are then lead into the exhibit and they eat the Sphinx model’s head, causing the professor to go complain to the captain. Every puzzle in Stacking has these multiple points of information strewn throughout the level in a nonlinear way. So even if a player misses one bit of information, there are others that they could possibly pick up on. In addition to that, a player could pick up on information on a totally different solution and just follow through on that instead. It makes playing Stacking feel less like a strictly authored puzzle game and more like an organic situation that just plays out. Situational puzzles are extremely satisfying to solve when you are the one drawing the lines.