Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

The deck begins with one drawn card, the rest of is scattered in layers at the top of the screen, sort of like patience - upside down but overlapping - and the rest of deck is at the bottom left containing, hopefully in a convenient order, cards valued one higher or lower than the ones laid out above.

The game is fun of itself. For every good match you make the decrementing timer gets bumped by up a good way, so there's no need to rush. If you do rush however, you net a better overall score. In this way, speed is important as well as the mental and physical stamina need to keep up that level of concentration. After all, more than one card can be facing up at the top of the game area.

This is all well and good, but it's not just a test of your own strengths - you're against limitless competition, unless you've chosen a limit 10 tournament. I like to win, but pitting myself against random strangers doesn't give me a "buzz". Added to that, your entry fee is more like a bet, especially with the listing that increment according to how many people play the game.

Being realistic, it is a card game - the odds of seeing X or Y is very random - and you can go for a good way through the deck before finding the one you need to advance. Some runs are long are uncover beautifully. Other times, you get dealt a "bad deck" and there's nothing you can do to salvage the game. There is no reshuffle, undo or redraw.

Really, sinking gold into the game is kind of fun since the rewards can be quite high, but like much else on Gaia these days, it's more a way to get users to spend gold, not obtain it.

I suppose like any other form of gambling, you ought to look at it as just that - money you're unlikely to ever see again. That bothers me.

I work a bit at fishing and gathering insects to produce more ink, so just using any money I make from that for the sake of playing "Stack Attack" doesn't seem exactly ... well, sane.

I do admit that I find the game itself quite addicting, but truly, I'd rather if rewards were based on how many "rounds" you got through, rather than how many other people you beat out due to chance drawing, speed and stamina. After all, it's a taxing game, so after expenditure and effort, you should get a just reward, not an emptier wallet.

It will hard to stop as I like the game itself, but the execution leaves me feeling too empty, whether I win or not.