Stacklands (2022)

Hmmm!

I needed something to play without focusing too hard. It's been fun, but I'm about 4.5 hours in and I'm starting to feel like I'm scouring the game for more content. There are DLC packs but I'm not completely sure I trust that the game's infrastructure will hold up under more content. Maybe I'll play them, maybe not.

Pros:

• Satisfying design, simplistic and visually parsable
• Simple enough to play while splitting attention
• Great value for money

Cons:

• Not hard enough to catch full attention, but fairly unforgiving if player slips up
• Task scarcity towards endgame
• Discovery-based rewards, but these are finite and linear so exhausted by endgame

I recently played through Stacklands and I had some fun playing through it, especially at the beginning, however the game incentivizes a playstyle that progresively gets slower and more boring as you play, and in the end you're doing nothing but waiting for a few resources so you can finish the game

The game is a survival building/management game with a simple premise: You have a few cards at your disposal, and you can stack them so they interact with each other. For example, you can put a villager card on top of an apple tree card so that you start getting some apple cards. You have to make your way to the final boss while making sure you have enough food to feed your villagers every night, or else you'll have to start all over again. I finished this game almost 100% on my first run and it took me 11 hours of playtime. And even if a bunch of it was me waiting for materials and weapons to finish crafting, 11 hours is a lot.

And I think that's the thing that ruins this game: The survival aspect. It feels like the game simultaneously wants you to lose, and yet makes the player invest too much into the game to the point where they would never consider losing. So in the end you're incentivized to turtle your way to the end, and it just keeps getting more and more boring as you keep unlocking new stuff that you'll probably never use because it's not part of your already established strategy.

While the game might be a bit boring at times, every other part is at least decent. The graphics are really nice, and the music is good enough (although the sound design might be rough at times). And honestly aside from the design issues, the game is actually really well made and apart from one or two weird interactions some cards can have. I was honestly impresed with the game, especially after learning the developers (sokpop) made a new game every single month.

But I have to try and be objective, and in conclusion: Stacklands was a nice indie experience that dragged on for a bit too long. It had a lot of neat and unique ideas, but the difference between how the game wants to be played and how it was designed to be played creates a big dissonance that ends up making the game feel slow and boring. I'd say I still liked it, just not as much as I would've expected. 6/10

This is is honestly a masterclass in minimalistic game design. Sokpop is out there making games that are unlike anything else right now, and I fuckin love it. (sidenote: Stacklands feels sorta like a more-refined-yet-completely-different version of one of Sokpop's other titles, Simmiland. Similar concept, but I liked the execution of this one a lot better.)

Stacklands a survival/management/townbuilding game that's been distilled into a card-based system, where you can put cards on top of other cards to make them do things, like combine into a different card, or generate a new card, or fight that card, and so on. So if you like the concept of survival games but hate all the walking around and grindy ingredient-gathering bits, then you'll probably dig this.

My favorite thing is the usage of the physical space. You have an open, unrestricted game board to use as you see fit, placing your cards in whatever way makes sense to you, but the space and physical collision of cards also serves as a meta mechanic. For example, if you have critter cards on the board like chickens or rabbits, they have a mind of their own and will hop and wander around your board. This doesn't do any real damage, but they will bump other cards out of their way, messing up your orderly organization. So you can build an animal pen card to stack them on, which will keep them in place. I love these type of mechanics because it gives a sense of character and personality. There's tons of clever interactions to discover, making the whole thing come alive in a way that you wouldn't expect from just arranging cards on a table.

I completed Stacklands to 100% (all quests, all cards, final boss defeated) in about 15 hours total and really can't say there were any dull moments. It's only 5 bucks and worth every cent. Go check it out!