The plight of the proletariat has never been so preciously portrayed as it is in Stacking, the latest game from the newly download-focused developers at Double Fine Productions. Set against the backdrop of the industrial revolution's autumn years, Stacking uses the concept of Russian stacking dolls as the core conceit for its puzzling adventure. As a sentient doll in a world full of dolls, you use your ability to stack with larger dolls to take control of them, thus giving you access to their unique abilities to solve world-based puzzles and defeat plutocratic greed in the name of the working class. Not exactly the kind of subject matter one tends to find in games intended to amuse and inspire warm feelings, but honestly, when has Double Fine ever stuck to tried-and-true, broad-spectrum comedy? That the brains behind Stacking were able to create such an engaging and chuckle-worthy puzzle game around such depressingly bleak concepts as child labor and the working man's burden is, in a weird way, almost par for the course with this studio.
