Does It Stack? Hands-On: Tumble VR Meets Mixed Reality

Does It Stack? is a new physics-based puzzle game in mixed reality, and we went hands-on at Gamescom. Here are our full impressions.

Previously featured in our last UploadVR Summer Showcase, Does It Stack? from Belgian studio Cybernetic Walrus challenges you to stack everyday items to a certain height without toppling the pile. Featuring 60 levels with three challenges each and 150 unlockable objects, it times your runs and uploads your scores to an online leaderboard. Here’s the previous trailer.

It’s reminiscent of Supermassive Games’ Tumble VR, the PSVR port for the PS3 puzzler that involved similar item physics-based challenges, and there’s an immediately relatable premise that’s straightforward to learn. While Does It Stack? also supports a fully immersive VR mode and local co-op, my recent single-player demo showcased four mixed reality stages on Quest 3.

The easier difficulty only involves stacking these objects to reach a certain height, and you begin with a handful of pre-determined objects of four different colors. Not every object needs using to reach this goal, and being able to complete levels through multiple methods offers some creative freedom. Multicolored objects, like a yellow table with red legs, create welcome strategic considerations.

You can’t brute force your way to the goal by stacking matching colored objects together, though. Even if they only touch briefly, two objects of the same color touching create an explosion that can jeopardize your entire stack. It’s a nice twist, though this can cause frustrations when items accidentally touch while you’re just moving them to a different location.

Where things get tricky is on the harder difficulties, and the second challenge introduces a puzzle element. One level required topping the stack with a cheese wheel, while another level needed the last item to be blue. That doesn’t sound so bad at face value until you see which specific items you’ve been granted.

There’s not much else I can say until I’ve seen the wider features like multiplayer, but it’s a straightforward premise that works well in mixed reality. Cybernetic Walrus informed me that Stack is also the first game in its new “Does It” series, though they couldn’t confirm details on what’s coming next. As someone who enjoyed Tumble VR in 2016, I like what I’ve seen.

Does It Stack? arrives this fall on the Meta Quest platform.