Stacking

Stacking is an action-adventure and puzzle-solving video game developed by Double Fine Productions and published by THQ. Much like the studio’s earlier release, Costume Quest, Stacking is a more compact game developed during Brutal Legend’s production. Lee Petty, the art director at Double Fine, developed the concept for the game, which is based on the Russian stacking matryoshka dolls. Petty saw the dolls as a way to replace the standard player interface in graphical adventure games. The player takes control of Charlie Blackmore, the most miniature doll in the set, who has the ability to stack and unstack into larger dolls and use their abilities to solve puzzles. These puzzles must be solved for Charlie to rescue his older siblings and end the child labor that the antagonist, the Baron, is enforcing. The game’s puzzles can be solved in several different ways, and there are also additional puzzles and challenges that the player can complete to learn more about the game’s setting outside of the main storyline.