Play in Process: Stacking, a Satirical Videogame about the Industrial Revolution

The game many are touting as a creative step forward in video games is Bulletstorm, because of the way it changes the first-person-shooter mechanic, but let’s be honest. If this is the best gaming has to offer on the creativity front, we’ve got a real problem on our hands. Thankfully, we have something truly unique in Stacking, an Xbox Live and Playstation Network game (only $15!) in which you control various Russian stacking dolls to solve puzzles in various ways.

That right there is unique enough, but Stacking goes a step further by offering up a truly unique satirical look at the 1940s industrial revolution and the toll it took on society and families. I’m not kidding! I’m only part-way through, but so far, it’s actually pretty smart, at least when compared to Bulletstorm’s supposed satire of the first-person-shooter genre. By allowing us to control Charlie, the runtiest in a family of several children who were sent off to work camps to work off their missing dad’s debt, they put us in a position of the underprivileged class. The whole game is an exploration of what it’s like to look at the industrialized world through the eyes of all classes, from the highest class to the lowest class, and even the dogs. It’s fascinating and hilarious to see what these people obsess themselves with, and I think that’s kind of the point.

Play in Process is a short weekly rumination on a game I’ve been playing.