Matthew Bailey“Tower Stack” is a dexterity game that has been marketed quite heavily in recent months, so I decided to pick it up and share my thoughts.
Generally speaking, the gameplay is very straightforward. You take the wobbly “Tower Stack” base and place it on the upturned plastic stand. On your turn, you draw a card that tells you which piece to place onto the stack. As the tower wobbles back and forth, you try to keep it balanced so it doesn’t fall over on your turn.
If the tower collapses on your turn, you lose—much like “Jenga.” There isn’t really a winner unless, of course, you’re playing with just two players.
From a dexterity perspective, it’s not actually very challenging to place the pieces. It’s fairly easy to gauge whether you’re pushing the stack too far. Most of the pieces tend to have four square-shaped sections of plastic, so they weigh roughly the same regardless of their shape. As a result, you rarely feel a sense of uncertainty about how a placement will turn out. In reality, games typically ended because there weren’t many viable placement options left. There is, however, a minor tactical element in forcing your opponent to place their piece in a less optimal position.
A significant downside to the game is the absolutely dire production quality. When the game arrived, I genuinely thought it was a counterfeit copy because of how poor the box was, how cheap and flimsy the insert felt, and the overall low quality of the components. Sadly, after some research, I discovered it was indeed a genuine copy—it just suffers from extremely low production values. While this doesn’t detract from the fun of the gameplay itself, it does make the game feel more like a disposable toy. I can easily imagine losing pieces due to how poorly the insert holds everything together.
While I’m not going to give “Tower Stack” the most glowing recommendation, I will say it works well as what I call a “friends-over-after-school” game. In other words, it’s a game with almost no rules, is super easy to understand, and doesn’t really matter if the box gets damaged or a piece goes missing.
