Stackabout
Build freely.
What it is
Stackabout is a box of bricks with a world round it. Pick a piece, touch the ground and it’s there; stack it, slide it, paint it. Bricks, plates, slopes, doors, windows, arches, fences, lights and wheels snap onto the studs, in twenty colours laid out by shade and clear glass, and a piece goes only where it has something to hold on to. Build up lays the next row, staggered like real brickwork; Copy picks up a whole build, and Keep as a kit puts it in the Kits tab on every world, with a name you give it, beside the ready-made ones. On Detail high, soft shade gathers where pieces meet.
Walk through what you built
Then walk your figure through what you made: doors open as you reach them, and lights glow when you bring on evening or night. A build on two or more wheels is yours to drive, steering any way you push, over bumps and up steps two bricks high; with a seat you ride in it while its steering wheel turns. A boat hull floats, so a boat you build sails across the water.
Something to build for
Folk live near where you start, each wishing for something you can build. Chests further out hold new pieces to find, kept for every world. And the Parts tab has toys: a ball to kick or throw, a goal, a hoop, a trampoline, a slide, a swing and a seesaw. A windmill’s sails turn on their own, and a merry-go-round goes round when you ride it, with up to two of the folk from nearby riding along; the flag you find in the first chest waves.
Worlds
New players start on the Island, or in Endless if they pick it on the opening card; Worlds has other kinds too, Endless among them: green country, snow and desert with lakes and seas between, made as you go, with villages further out, a compass that points home and a map of the land round you. Each village has three folk with wishes of their own; once each has had one, the whole village wishes for lights round its well, and gets a festival; then for a road out past its houses, which its folk walk; then for a road to the next village, and once two are joined their folk visit each other. Your worlds are kept in the browser you play in, and Save a copy puts one in a file to open again anywhere. Your look dresses your figure, down to the hair, and starts with Body: Female or Male, every hair style and colour going on either, and your choice comes with you to every world.
Stackabout also has a home of its own at stackabout.com, where it installs as an app on a phone or a computer. The app keeps its own worlds: Save a copy here and Open a copy there, both on the Worlds sheet.
How to play
- Place a pieceTouch the ground; touch and hold, then slide, to place it exactly
- Look aroundSlide to turn, pinch to zoom, two fingers to move round
- ToolsBuild, Move, Build up, Copy, Take and Paint, under the tray
- Undo and RedoTop right; Redo appears once you’ve undone something
- WalkWalk, top right: a stick and Jump
- Drive or sailWalk up to it and tap Drive or Sail
In Paint, tap a piece to paint it; hold it and slide to paint everything you pass over, or hold it and lift to pick up its colour. With Take or Paint, One piece or Whole build sits where the tray was, so a whole build can be cleared or repainted at once. Keep as a kit asks for a name; pick one of your kits and Name this kit gives it another.
Push the stick all the way to run. Tap Jump to hop; hold it to jump higher. Push the stick the way to go when you drive or sail, and Get out steps off. Walk into a ball to kick it; stand by one and tap Throw. Walk up to a slide’s ladder, under a swing or to a seesaw’s end and tap its button; walk up to a merry-go-round and tap Ride. The menu holds Your look, Sound, Time, Detail, Take a photo and Worlds, and Map in an Endless world.
On a desktop, click as you would tap, drag to turn the view and scroll to zoom. Or use the keys: Tab walks; walking, W A S D or the arrows walk, Shift runs and Space jumps (hold it to jump higher), and E drives, gets out, rides or throws. In building, W A S D or the arrows move the view, [ and ] change the tray, the number row picks pieces in it, R turns, Z undoes (Shift+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y redoes) and C changes colour; N shows the map in an Endless world, and M mutes.
What isn’t settled yet
It is for one player: the folk are the world’s people, not players. There is nothing to win and no score kept beyond the folk’s wishes and the pieces to find: it is a sandbox. How far an Endless world draws on an older tablet is still being tuned; Detail low helps a slow device. Your worlds, kits and found pieces live in the browser they’re made in, so clearing the site’s data starts over; a world you saved a copy of can be opened again.
Build Log
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Build 44
Think pink! Six fresh colours for your bricks, from Pink and Teal to Navy, Dark red, Dark green and Dark grey.
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Build 43
Who’s building today? Pick Female or Male at the top of Your look, then dress them however you like. Every hair style works on both.
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Build 42
Shoulders back, chin up! Your builder runs tall now, with no more hunching over on the dash to the next build.
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Build 41
Roll out the welcome mat! The ground takes paint now: lay a stone path up to your door, fill a beach with sand or turn a whole field red. Five new ground colours, and As it was if you change your mind.
Earlier builds (11)
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Build 39
Come on over! Pave a road between two neighbouring villages and their folk start dropping in on each other, with your new road drawn on the map.
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Build 38
Road trip! Pave a path of plates from a village well out past the houses and watch its folk take their first stroll down your new road.
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Build 37
Festival season! Make each of a village’s three folk happy, hang three lights round the well, and watch the whole village gather round and hop for joy. They’ll meet there again every evening.
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Build 36
First time here? Pick your adventure. The Island is right there as always, or tap Start in Endless and set off across land that never runs out.
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Build 35
Changed your mind? Redo has your back. Paint now sweeps across walls in one slide, a long press borrows any piece’s colour, Whole build repaints or clears an entire creation in a single tap, and the kits you keep finally get proper names.
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Build 31
The off-road update. Cars park on bushes, rocks and bumpy ground and roll right over them, the shore holds steady as you sail, and the see-through wall trick waits until there’s really a wall in the way.
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Build 29
Your world has started moving. Windmills turn, merry-go-rounds spin while you ride (tap Ride and nearby folk hop on with you), and that flag you found in the first chest finally flutters.
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Build 28
Endless worlds have villages now, out past where you start: three houses by a well, built in their country’s colours. Each village has a name, and greets you with it as you walk in. Three folk live in each, wishing for things you can build them, as the folk where you start do. On the map, each village shows as two little houses.
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Build 27
Where pieces meet, the light softens now: the ground at the foot of a wall, the inside of a corner, the seams between bricks and the underside of an overhang near its wall sit a little in shadow, so builds stand on the ground and brickwork shows its joints. Detail low turns it off.
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Build 26
Tap Jump for a hop, or hold it to jump up onto three bricks. Your figure has ten hair styles now, from a ponytail to a mohawk.
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Build 24
Cars and boats steer any way you push, not in quarter turns, and go faster: up to 16 studs a second on land, 13 on the water. A seat and a steering wheel join the parts, and the car and boat kits carry both.
Credits and licences
Built on three.js, used under the MIT licence with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Typefaces are licensed under the SIL Open Font Licence. Cover drawn from the game’s own bricks, kits and figure.
Stackabout is original work by Launchway Games.