Official Score
Overall - 75%
75%
The pastel world and happy-go-lucky premise of Alpaca Stacka achieve exactly what it sets out to do, providing a casual experience kids (and kids at heart) will absolutely love. It’s overly short, but think of it as a casual breather between meatier titles and you’ll have a great time.
The love for alpacas is universal – anybody who says otherwise most likely lacks a soul. Sebastian Baracaldo, Michelle Ma, and Spookulele Games have paid tribute to this one-of-a-kind animal with their new 3D platformer Alpaca Stacka. Combining hide-and-seek gameplay with a storybook world, should players take the reins of this fuzzy fellow?
Alpaca Stacka Review
Before players dive into the action, the stage for Alpaca Stacka is set with a brief storybook cutscene. Mama Hen is having a party, and Paz the alpaca has been invited. However, the jealous Streusel is a bit unhappy about the situation, and lets this hen’s five little chicks run free. This alpaca, being the kind hearted fellow that he is, sets off to find each of them and bring them back home.
What follows is a hunt for Chirpy, Chase, Cheri, Cheryl, and Choco. Each one is doing something different with their time – one is playing in the mud, while another is singing their heart out on the top of a hill. As players progress, they’ll put these little chickadees on their back and put them back in the pen.
If this sounds overly cute, that’s because it is. The gameplay is overly simplistic and cutesy at its core, but that’s exactly how it was designed. There’s not too much to the gameplay; players use a WASD and mouse setup to navigate platforms, with the most complex sort of movement being the jump button with the space bar. There’s no life system, danger, or high score – what you see is what you get. There is a special sort of emote mapped to the right mouse button though, so it’s certainly got that going for it.
This also proves to be its greatest strength – this is a short-but-sweet jaunt that is bound to put a smile on your face. Traversing its pastel island world, shaking trees and bouncing along mushrooms will no doubt provide a pure shot of dopamine. It’s not like this is the most robust title around – most players will be done with it in around 15 minutes with 100% of the achievements unlocked – but it proves to be a good palate cleanser between the more meaty titles on the Steam storefront today.
There just should have been more though; it feels more like a proof of concept than anything else. One could tell that this was more of a project than anything else, but the idea of them having a bigger world or more baby chicks to rescue would have given it some much-needed legs.
The pastel world and happy-go-lucky premise of Alpaca Stacka achieve exactly what it sets out to do, providing a casual experience kids (and kids at heart) will absolutely love. It’s overly short, but think of it as a casual breather between meatier titles and you’ll have a great time.
