How to Play Stack Tower

What it is

Stack Tower is a one-button timing game. A neon slab slides back and forth above your tower, and you drop it at just the right moment to build higher. It takes seconds to learn and a lot of focus to master, which makes it perfect for quick sessions.

How to play (rules)

A slab slides back and forth across the screen, entering from alternating sides on each new floor.
Drop it onto the tower below. Any part hanging over the edge gets sliced off and falls away.
The part that lands becomes your new top floor, so a sloppy drop leaves you a narrower slab to work with.
Land it almost exactly on top of the floor below and it counts as a perfect drop. You keep your full width, and the game cheers you on with a “Perfect” message that counts your streak.
String together three or more perfect drops in a row and your slab starts to grow back a little with each one, up to its starting width.
The slab speeds up with every floor you add, up to a top speed.
Miss the tower completely and it’s “Tower toppled”. The end screen shows how many floors you stacked.

Controls (desktop and mobile)

Mobile: tap anywhere on the game to drop.
Desktop: press Space (or Enter), or click the game.
P pauses, R restarts and F toggles full-screen. The toolbar has matching buttons.
M mutes or unmutes the sound.
Two toolbar buttons control sound and motion. Mute sound (M) turns the sound effects off, and its label changes to “Unmute sound (M)” so you can switch them back on. Reduce motion turns off screen shake, flashes and particle bursts. Slabs land without the squash, sliced pieces fall without spinning, the view jumps up instead of gliding, and the glowing ring on perfect drops is skipped. It starts out matching your device’s reduce-motion setting. Each button has a short text label next to or under its icon. Your choices are remembered on your device and shared by every game in the Arcade.

The big number at the top of the screen is your floor count.

Sound and effects

Stack Tower has sound effects and visual effects. Each slab lands with a thud and a little squash, and sliced-off pieces spin away. Perfect drops ring out with a glowing ring, sparks and a “PERFECT” pop-up that counts your streak, and every floor shows the points you earned. Missing the tower ends in a crash, a burst of sparks and a screen shake. Beating your previous best mid-run sets off a “NEW BEST!” celebration.

Scoring and high scores

Each floor is worth 10 points plus 5 points for every drop in your current perfect streak. A normal drop earns 10. A perfect drop in a streak of three earns 25, and a streak of ten earns 60 per floor. A single drop that isn’t perfect resets the streak to zero, so perfect runs are where the big scores come from.

Your best score is saved in your browser. When a run ends, the game-over screen shows your score next to your best and adds ”★ New best!” when you beat it. If your score would make the global top-10 board, the screen tells you where you’d rank and lets you enter a name and press Submit. If the board is full and you fall short, it shows the score you need to get in. When Stack Tower is the daily challenge, the goal is to stack 20 floors.

Tips to beat your best

Watch the edge of the floor below, not the moving slab. Drop when the edges line up.
Find a rhythm. The slab moves at a steady speed on each floor, so count the beat.
Early floors are slower, which makes them the best time to build a perfect streak.
If your slab has gotten narrow, chase perfect streaks to earn some width back.
Stay calm as the speed climbs. Rushing a drop usually costs more width than waiting for the next pass.