Stacklands

Stacklands offers to build a village using cards instead of an interface: everything that happens is displayed on the table, where cards of people, resources and buildings are located. Get the right combinations and you'll get food, a tool, or a new resident. The mechanics are simple and addictive: cards need to be dragged, combined and put aside in time. Every minute counts, because over time more and more events and enemies come, and sluggishness results in loss. There are also combat skirmishes: the same cards are used against monsters as for the household. As you progress, new sets of cards and levels with their own conditions open up. The point of each episode is to have time to collect the desired combination before the time runs out. Failure is not annoying: restarting takes seconds, and the solution is usually obvious - but only after everything has gone wrong. Separately, it is worth noting that the levels are not similar to each other: somewhere you need to hold out for a certain time, somewhere you need to assemble a specific building. Along the way, new maps and mechanics are revealed, and along with them, the approach to planning changes. Mistakes here are not punished for long: a lost run is dismantled into pieces, and the next attempt usually turns out better. It’s worth adding that the game also has sets of cards that can be combined in different ways: one run will be quiet and economical, the other full of attacks. The graphics are deliberately schematic, with a minimum of details, and this is correct: you need to look not at the pictures, but at the connections between the cards. Stacklands is a rare example of a game where the card table has become a full-fledged world.