StacksOnStacks(OnStacks) Demo

Video games are advanced enough to simulate almost everything nowadays, especially when it comes to video games. Hence, the physics engines are powerful enough to simulate reality, which allows players to interact with the environment in a much more believable way. On the other hand, it’s still quite expensive to buy a rig capable of running all the latest games.

StacksOnStacks(OnStacks) looks quite odd at a first glance, but you should be able to figure out the gameplay mechanics in just a few short minutes. As such, the game is basically a heavily modified Jenga with a few Tetris elements thrown in for taste. Thus, your goal is to stack blocks of different shapes on top of each other and reach the requested height, which is tougher than it sounds.

The blocks fall from the sky just like in Tetris, and you can see the next shape before it descends, which allows you to do some planning. Even so, the camera angle is a bit strange, which means that it might be more difficult than you expect when it comes to positioning the blocks. You can rotate the camera to get a better look, but the perspective is fixed, which is a bit of a bummer.

Every now and again special blocks make an appearance, and they provide you with the possibility to earn bonuses or play various mini-games. It’s important that you keep them on the platform in order to receive the bonus, because any block that falls off the platform disappears and drains one of your lives. Obviously, the round ends when you run out of lives, although it depends on what difficulty level you have chosen.

As for the graphics, you shouldn’t expect anything too great, but the developers did a wonderful job with the colors and the general mood of the game. On the other hand, the camera issues come to mind again, because you’ll often be annoyed by the weird angles. The controls on the keyboard are difficult to adjust to as well, although things are much easier to deal with if you have a gamepad.

In the end, StacksOnStacks(OnStacks) is a unique video game that can easily eat a few hours of your life. Hence, if you enjoy a casual, yet challenging arcade game about block stacked on top of each other, you can support the developers by voting for the game on Steam Greenlight.