Leave it to Tim Schafer's Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts, Brütal Legend) to find inspiration for a video game in Russian stacking (nesting, matryoshka) dolls. But that's exactly what the studio has done with its latest effort, Stacking.

Stacking marks the second downloadable offering from Double Fine's collaboration with THQ, and while brief, it's a charming one. As far as the story goes, Stacking is set in the industrial age, and the Blackmore family of stacking dolls works as chimney sweeps. But times are hard under an evil man known as The Baron, who is becoming infamous for his child labor plans.

To make it all worse, the Blackmore family has fallen into debt, and with the exception of a runt named Charlie have been forced into seemingly inescapable slavery. But Charlie has a few tricks up his sleeve - namely, being able to jump into the bodies of larger stacking dolls and control them - and he sets forth on a mission to save his family and end The Baron's reign.

In terms of gameplay, Stacking is essentially a puzzler and adventurer, disguised as third-person title of some other nature. The player uses the left analog stick to move and the right to control the camera. Most other things are mapped to the face buttons. One button let's the player stack into bigger dolls (just the next size up for each stack). Another unstacks one doll at a time.

The trick is that each unique doll has some sort of ability, and there are a variety of dolls wandering around the environments. Charlie simply talks to other dolls to gather information, but the powers of the dolls he enters range from flatulence, to serving soup, to belly bouncing, to giving other characters wedgies. And as silly as all of that sounds, these abilities are all of use in solving the game's puzzles.

The length is one of the big talking points of Stacking, and rightfully so. When many downloadable games have found a standard in $10 prices, Stacking asks $15 and offers only a couple hours to play through the entire campaign, if gamers don't get into the extra options. And without a doubt, it's a questionable price-to-content ratio.

That said, Stacking provides more content in its alternate solutions and side quests. Most puzzles in the game have three to five ways to solve them, which is a nice treat in a puzzler, when they usually focus on only one solution. So gamers can go back to each scenario to find different solutions to it. Hi-jinks also provide silly things to go around and do with different characters. Side puzzles also extend the fun.

The presentation of the game is interesting as well. Stacking is draped in sepia tones during its cutscenes, which play out like silent films. Text blocks come up on the screen for the dialogue between scenes acted by the dolls. And even the rumble and clicks of a projector are inserted to lend more credibility to the presentation. The family has a cheesy catchphrase, and the big moments play out with over-the-top comic absurdity.

It's all well and good, and gives the game a unique style and charm. It's just not as funny as we've grown accustomed to with Double Fine games. It's a bit disappointing, especially when it seems like more time was spent on the cutscenes and puzzle concepts, rather than in-game graphics and animation.

More disappointing is that, while there are plenty of options, none of the puzzles seem too difficult to solve. Maybe it's because of the options for each that it seems easy to breeze through - giving unique gamers with unique idea multiple ways to pursue each puzzle - but there aren't many major challenges.

But Stacking is, overall, a fun downloadable title from Double Fine game. It comes in an easily digestible size, with extra depth for gamers who want to see it through to the end. Stacking's charming style is marred by a few faults - in-game animation, easy puzzles and lack of much humor - but there's more than enough to find from the title's unlikely source material.

Final Score: B-