Stacklands is a mannerly and deceptively difficult game past the Sokpop Collective. A solitaire carte game city builder roguelike, you would think that a game with and then many unlike elements would be incommunicable to relish without a meaning time investment, simply Sokpop has crafted an intuitive plenty experience that you tin immediately pick up.

However, despite its accessible nature, there's a lot of depth to the game, to the bespeak that some things can even come off as obtuse. While discovery is role of the game's appeal, some basic things aren't emphasized or even mentioned. Here are some of the things we wish we knew before we started Stacklands.

7/7 You Can Sell The Idea Cards

Stacklands - An early board with Idea cards

Idea Cards are the main source of crafting recipes in Stacklands, giving y'all some much-needed management and opening upwardly your options in the game. They all toll one gilt, only tin can clog upwardly your board as you accumulate them.

That'south because you're probably supposed to sell them. They don't actually do anything one time you have them, other than create clutter, and the recipe is unlocked in your Ideas tab after you get information technology. In fact, yous don't even need the idea cards to memorize new recipes, since any combinations that you manage to suss out on your own are likewise saved in your Ideas tab.

half dozen/7 There'due south A Lot Of RNG

Stacklands - Booster Pack Showcase

A major mechanic in the game is modeled after TCG booster packs, so Stacklands is relatively up front end nigh how much randomness figures into gameplay, and even then, at to the lowest degree the name of each booster pack gives you an idea of what it contains.

That being said, beyond the card packs, there are a lot of variables in play: when the strange portals spawn (which drop in monsters for y'all to deal with), getting a 2nd villager, what resource y'all get from cards, and whether your villagers' attacks land, simply to proper noun a few.

5/7 Build The Coin Chest

Stacklands - Coins Loose vs. Coins in Coin Chest

You lot might notice that as you learn coins, they tend to ataxia up the little corporeality of space yous have to piece of work with. Well, if yous stack a money and two wood, and then you can accept yourself an economical infinite-saving solution: the coin chest.

It may be tempting to but save the money, simply in an already card-heavy game, having some open space is a sanity saver, especially since the different cards - non all of which can stack together - tin really add upwardly. Also, there's zilch quite as satisfying equally a clean, well-organized board.

iv/7 Card Expansions = Board Expansion

Stacklands - Day 1 vs Day 30

The shed, and afterward on the warehouse, serve a valuable purpose in the game, namely increasing your card cap and assuasive yous to agree onto more cards without selling them at the terminate of a Moon.

They besides have another important purpose that may not be readily apparent until yous accept a few of them down, which is that they also increase your board size as you build them. The consequence is subtle, but very obvious when y'all start a new game after yous had a few sheds and warehouses in your terminal run and now take to debate with a tiny lath again.

iii/seven Berry + Apple = Early Game Food Storage

Stacklands - Loose Fruits vs. Fruit Salad

Starvation is always a looming threat in Stacklands, and so information technology would be beneficial to continue a surplus of food for your villagers. However, having besides many berries and apples lying around will not only make your board messier, just y'all may even have to finish up selling your surplus when you striking the card cap.

Fortunately, yous can combine an apple and a berry to make fruit salad, which not only gives you lot the same corporeality of food, effectively halving the infinite the items would have taken separately, simply it as well sells for more than each of those items separately, meaning when you have a comfy surplus, you tin sell them at a much higher profit!

2/7 Pause Liberally

Stacklands - Whole Board

One of your biggest opponents and most of import resources in Stacklands is time. Y'all pay in food at the end of every Moon or lose villagers (or the game, if you merely have i), you run the risk of coming up against a monster-summoning Strange Portal at the end of a Moon, and the monsters summoned become tougher and more numerous whenever this happens.

Luckily, you tin can pause the game freely, which means yous have all the time you demand to movement cards and make decisions, something yous should fully have reward of, every bit even running the game at normal speed while you move cards and such tin cost you. Of grade, as you get amend at the game, you can also speed fourth dimension upward for when yous're genuinely out of deportment to take.

one/7 There'due south A Win Condition

The final boss vs an unprepared militia.

Though the game seems similar i of those experiences where the betoken is how long y'all can last before the weight of entropy crushes you under its inexorable boot, a quick glance at the accomplishment list - the completion of which can constitute its own win condition - will reveal that there is in fact a terminal dominate to face.

Without spoiling too much, you summon this boss past putting an object in a certain structure. While this might seem birdbrained, the game doesn't fifty-fifty tell y'all this much. And then, experiment with card combinations and build yourself a hamlet mighty plenty to take on this mighty final foe! Even subsequently you win, zilch'south stopping you from going once more, though...

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