Stack Up Or Dive Trying Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · September 7, 2021

This Stack Up or dive trying review takes on this stack-your-way-up platformer. The objective is simple: get as high as you can. Avoid contact with water at all costs, be swift with your movements and build yourself a makeshift staircase to the top with the objects falling around you.

Stack Up Or Dive Trying Review Pros:

Big bright colorful graphics.
380.39MB download size.
Steam achievements.
Full controller support.
Graphics – resolution, and field of view slider.
Optional tutorial menu.
Online multiplayer with host/password controls.
3 difficulties – Easy, medium, and hard.
Online leaderboards for each difficulty.
Custom game settings – water speed, power up spawn delay, the time before you sink, and object spawn delay.
The game involves you building up to avoid sinking in a room with ever-flowing water.
Power-ups can be picked up and used.
Break boxes to get an item out of them and place them, they can be rotated.
Customize your character with new hammers and hats from crates.
Crates are earned from playing.
The game will keep spawning boxes.
Hit the water and your run is over.
Plays a bit like a Tetris game as you line up objects so you can climb.
Many item types like boxes with ladders, trampolines, and boxes with sticky substances on so you move slower.
Tense frantic atmosphere.
What you get from a box is random.
Power-ups will float down on balloons.
The power-up description and countdown will show on the screen.
Clear red or green outline to show if you can place an item or object.
First-person view.
Shines brightest in multiplayer.

Stack Up Or Dive Trying Review Cons:

The controller has issues navigating the menu at times.
Minimal graphic settings.
No way to rebind controls.
The tutorial only gives keyboard controls and half the actions were not bound to the controller meaning you had to use the keyboard.
The menu is clunky.
Not a game that compels you to keep playing with no real hook.
If you play solo then the crates/customisation is pointless as you never see yourself.
Music is limited and repetitive.
The mouse cursor stays on the screen.
You always need a mouse and keyboard on hand as you never know when you can’t select a menu option or reach it.
No local multiplayer.