Stacklands: A Delightfully Engaging Village Management Game

I recently discovered Stacklands thanks to everyone’s favorite Irish YouTuber, Francis John, and it has been an absolute delight. In Stacklands, you are tasked with managing a village in a two-dimensional world where each entity within the village is represented by cards. As you progress through the game, you open packs to discover new cards. When stacked, the cards interact with each other; for instance, placing a villager on a tree will yield wood, while a berry bush produces fruit. Building is handled in the same manner—combining wood and stone creates various buildings, from lumberyards to mess halls. The ultimate goal of the game is to continue building your village while equipping your villagers to fend off interlopers emerging from a mysterious portal, a product of combining mysterious artifacts with your temples. The game culminates in a boss battle that tests your level of preparedness and evaluates whether you’ve appropriately transformed your simple villagers into battle-ready warriors.

The beauty of Stacklands lies in its simplicity. The core loop of the game involves gaining cards through pack openings or card combinations. Sokpop employs various methods to create challenges for the player, turning this from a basic village simulator into a relaxing yet highly engaging game. Stacklands spans multiple rounds, referred to as moons. At the end of each moon, you must feed your villagers and sell cards until you reach your maximum card limit. This round-based structure ensures you’re consistently considering multiple aspects, yet the challenges never feel overwhelming. Villager starvation is typically a result of mismanagement rather than the game dealing an unfair hand. The card limit, which can be increased, adds texture to the game. At times, you’re faced with choices between two cards, both of which you were saving to build something. Often, this situation arises from mismanagement on your part, as you might not have foreseen the need for an additional warehouse to expand your card limit.

Combat in the game is simple yet intriguing. You can choose from a wide array of weapons and armor to ensure your villagers are equipped to defend your settlement. A rock-paper-scissors mechanic exists between ranged weapons, melee weapons, and magic users. However, the item stats somewhat dilute the rock-paper-scissors nature; while you can optimize for matchups, it’s also possible to overpower encounters with well-equipped villagers. The game allows investment in either direction.

Shortly before I purchased the game, Sokpop released the first DLC for Stacklands, titled Cursed Worlds. This DLC requires you to start from scratch in three worlds afflicted by curses. Your task is to break each curse before moving on to the next world. Each world features a unique mechanic tied to the curse that significantly alters the game dynamics, introducing an additional layer of challenge to consider during gameplay. I found the DLC to be even more captivating than the original game. It’s less combat-centric and involves more elements of managing your villagers, necessitating careful planning for each moon to ensure you can both feed your villagers and meet the curse-imposed requirements.”, Stacklands and the Cursed Worlds DLC are truly remarkable. They have been my favorite discovery of the year so far. A noteworthy aspect is that both the game and the DLC cost less than 10 dollars each. Thanks to sales, I managed to acquire both for less than 15 dollars! While the game may have relatively low replayability in my opinion, it is certainly worth the cost. I wholeheartedly recommend trying out Stacklands and the Cursed Worlds DLC. If you haven’t experienced them yet, you absolutely should.