Tim Schafer has created a deft masterpiece in which an evil baron can be defeated by one force: stacking dolls
If adoration guaranteed success, Tim Schafer would doubtless be a multi-millionaire by now. Gamers who loved the Monkey Island adventures, Grim Fandango and Psychonauts have practically deified him. In person, he is self-effacing, smart and funny. He loves games, he believes in them. He called Bobby Kotick a prick.
He also has ideas such as this: in the midst of development hell on Brutal Legend, and inspired by the improvisational movie-making tactics of Chinese director, Wong Kar-wai, Schafer split his workforce at Double Fine into small groups and got them all to prototype small-scale games.
It was meant as a team-building exercise, but when Brutal Legend 2 fell through, he returned to the interesting ideas his staff came up with and spied a new production model: contained, digitally distributed titles, which could be pitched as cheaper, more risky prospects to the right publishers. So they pitched four of them and sold them all. The first out was Costume Quest, designed by ex-Pixar animator Tasha Harris, the next will be Stacking, an adventure puzzler like no other.
The setup is typically Schaferian. Charlie Blackmore is a teeny Russian doll whose family has been kidnapped by an evil industrialist who has put them to despicable work around his empire. But little Charlie isn't helpless, he has the ability to pop himself into progressively larger Russian dolls, taking on the abilities of each host. Cut adrift in a world that partly resembles a Victorian theatre and partly the set of a silent movie, he must use this gift to track down his siblings.
But although this sounds like typical Schafer, the concept came from Lee Petty, the art lead on Brutal Legend. "I was really interested in doing something in the adventure game genre, but I didn't want it to be a retro throwback," he says. "The things I focused on were story, ideas, being able to play the game at your own pace, logic puzzles. But I also wanted it to be more immediate, I wanted there to be a momentum to the gameplay. I saw my daughter playing with a stack of Russian dolls, and I thought, wow, that could really work, because rather than having an inventory of objects, each of the dolls could BE the objects. And stacking the dolls is fun in itself."
But it couldn't have been an easy sell, surely? During the Amnesia Fortnight process, how did he inspire other members of Double Fine to join his group? "At the end of my presentation, I had this list of reasons to join the Stacking team," he explains. "The top one was alcohol at every meeting. And there were no other reasons, I ran out of ideas.
"And it was a lie," adds Schafer.
Stacking begins in a cavernous railway station, where a noisy strike is in full swing. Charlie must coax four members of the mighty train guild out of their gentlemen's club to meet with the picketers and get the trains running again. But how will a lowly urchin do that? Subterfuge. With the setup established, you can freely wander the beautifully ornate station, "talking" to other dolls (which will usually elicit a daft speech bubble, or a useful clue) or stacking inside them. Once in he can access the unique special ability of the utmost doll ? one plays the violin, one can burp, one farts, and one slaps passers-by with a white-gloved hand. It doesn't sound useful, but remember, this is a Double Fine game.
Indeed, these abilities are needed to complete the challenge areas, where Charlie is given a significant puzzle to solve. To access the gentlemen's club he needs to distract the doorman, but does he do it by inhabiting a doll whose scream demands the help and attention of all gentlemen? Or perhaps by popping in an attractive blonde whose skill is simply named, 'seduce'. In fact, he could do either ? in Stacking, every puzzle has multiple solutions, and if you like, you can try to find them all. A handy guide in the pause menu shows how many are available for each challenge.
What immediately captures your attention, though, is the beautiful set design. From cardboard cut-out animals, to steam ship decks made out of lollipop sticks, the effect is part proscenium arch theatre, part model village. At the beginning of every challenge, there's a flickering silent film cut-scene, filled with visual gags that trade off the burly, pompous looks of the doll characters. It's so watchable and delightful.
Later, when the strike is broken, the trains become available, and each one leads to another area of the industrialist's empire and another family member to rescue. In our demo, we head to a steamship, where Charlie's sister is being employed to clean out the vast steam funnels with a toothbrush. There's a lovely puzzle in which the player needs to cause chaos at an onboard safari exhibition. One method is to break into the big game hunter's cabin, stack into his stuffed bear and run out to alarm the passengers ? who leave piles of sawdust in their terrified wake.
While you're not solving the key challenges, there are other activities. Players can earn bonuses for stacking into matching sets of dolls. There's an illusionist family, whose smallest member is a dog doll ? stack into him and you can do tricks like dragging your bottom half across the floor. (The team has teased an amazing amount of animative depth from a bunch of limbless dolls in two bulbous halves.)
You're also able to engage in hijinks, a range of daft mini-challenges which employ the special abilities of selected dolls. When Schafer demos the game to us, he shows off a task in which the white-gloved doll has to slap 10 other characters ? their affronted yelps and screams make it all the more enjoyable.
For Schafer the appeal of the game is obvious. "I started out working on adventure games with characters, stories and puzzles, games that moved at a certain pace and that I could play with my family. This isn't a throwback, but it has the fun part of those games, placed into a completely new mechanic."
Meanwhile, he's also overseeing the other two titles from that fortnight of experimentation, and then there's a burgeoning collaboration with an old LucasArts colleague. "Ron Gilbert and I are meeting regularly in our office to discuss a top secret project he has," teases Schafer. "It's something very new ... and very cool."
? Stacking will be released on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network on 31 March
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