Stacket Mini-Review

So, this is my very first "mini-review." Some games I really want to write about, but there's simply not that much to say about them. Now, instead of attempting to make up large (somewhat pointless) paragraphs, I'll simply label it a mini-review, and say what needs to be said. This will probably be used on simple games (like Stacket) or on expansions that don't add too many new elements to a game that I had previously reviewed (but are still worth talking about). Anyway, I just figured that I would explain what I meant by that term.

Today's review is of a little game called Stacket (or as I like to call it "Backwards Jenga"). In Stacket, players take turns adding a new piece to the ever increasing (and leaning) pile of miscellaneous wooden shapes. That's a bit too easy, though, so each time that you add a new piece, you have to make it touch the previously placed piece. If you knock off any of the previous pieces when attempting to place the new one, you lose! (And everyone else points and laughs; unless you're playing my (just now made up) "Family Variant" in which they laugh to themselves, but with no pointing.)

A leaning tower

Stacket is a fun little game that I think will appeal to the same people as Jenga. Whereas this isn't really most of my readers, there are tons of people that enjoy this kind of dexterity game. This also means that it is great for non-gamers. Whereas a lot of people (read "non-gamers") will stare blankly at you when you suggest playing an easy to learn game like Castle Panic, when you say, "hey, do you want to play Backwards Jenga?" They will be intrigued and many people will immediately be interested. It's a combination dexterity and party game. If you like both of those, then Stacket would be a great game for you. The same things that will attract people to Jenga will be what attracts people to Stacket - trying to make it just hard enough that the next person can't quite do what they need. Except, whereas in Jenga you only have the same rectangle shaped pieces, in Stacket you have different shaped objects that you create your tower with (this would be the second pro to the game - and for that matter, the game would be horribly boring if all of it's pieces were the same shape).

There is one giant con with Stacket. It is a huge pain to try to put away. All of the odd shaped pieces are supposed to fit nicely together into the plastic briefcase-shaped box. However, this will probably not work very well on the first try (unless you've lost a lot of the pieces). After each game of Stacket, I normally spend 1-5 minutes moving pieces around hoping to successfully shut the lid in what amounts to a giant 3D puzzle.

Overall, I give Stacket an 8.0/10. I think that it is a fun game that is easily accessible to anyone.  It won't appeal to a lot of the strategy gamers that read my blog, but I think that it would appeal to a lot more people than most anything that I normally review.  Whereas the game is "officially" aimed at people 13+, I think that this would be a great game to play with kids 7 and above.

If you like dexterity games, you might also like PitchCar, Caveman Curling, and Fastrack.

I would like to thank Evertide Games for providing me with a review copy of Stacket - which, as of this writing, is available on Kickstarter.