Stephen's Sausage Roll

Stephen's Sausage Roll is a 2016 puzzle video game developed and published by Increpare Games, the studio of designer Stephen Lavelle. The player controls a character who pushes sausage links onto hot grill tiles to cook them. It was received well by critics and was praised by other prolific indie puzzle video game creators.

Stephen's Sausage Roll
Developer(s)Increpare Games
Publisher(s)Increpare Games
Designer(s)Stephen Lavelle
EngineUnity
Platform(s)Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X
ReleaseApril 18, 2016 (2016-04-18)
Genre(s)Puzzle
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

Puzzles in Stephen's Sausage Roll involve moving around sausage links in a Sokoban-like grid format,[1][2] with the goal being to move each sausage over special grill tiles in order to cook them once on each spot—two spots on each "side" of the sausage—and then return the player character to the starting position.[3]

A puzzle can be failed either by burning a sausage, which happens when a single spot is cooked more than once; rolling a sausage off of the island and into the surrounding water; or making the player character themself fall into the water. The game includes an undo button to go back a single step, as well as a button to restart.[3]

The player character is composed of two parts: the character itself, and their fork, each of which occupy their own tile. The player can rotate in place and move forwards and backwards, but may not strafe while holding the fork, which makes navigation of tight spaces difficult.[3]

The game is split into multiple sections, each of which require all puzzles within to be completed before the player can move on to the next section. These sections introduce new puzzle mechanics as the game progresses, including the ability to skewer sausages onto the fork, roll on top of sausages, and the ability to separate the player character from their fork.[3][4]

Plot

The story of Stephen's Sausage Roll is communicated through stone tablets found throughout the game's overworld. They contain short, seemingly-unrelated phrases which gradually grow into a fuller story.[5]

Reception

Stephen's Sausage Roll holds an aggregated Metacritic score of 90/100, based on 9 critic reviews.[6] Reviewers noted the game's difficulty,[3][10][11] where Jordan Erica Webber from The Guardian said the game was more difficult than The Witness, which was already recognized for its difficulty.[3] The Guardian described the game's designer, Stephen Lavelle, as prolific.[3]

Prior to release fellow indie developers Bennett Foddy and Jonathan Blow both praised the game for its difficulty and originality, with Foddy comparing the game to Dark Souls.[12] Jordan Erica Webber from The Guardian noted that the difficulty may frustrate some players.[3]

Accolades
YearAwardCategoryResultRef
2017 The Edge Awards 2016 PC Game of the Year Won [13]

References
  1. Estrada, Marcus (April 18, 2016). "Stephen's Sausage Roll is a Challenging New Puzzler". Hardcore Gamer. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  2. O'Connor, Alice (April 18, 2016). "English Country Tune Dev Serves Stephen's Sausage Roll". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  3. Webber, Jordan Erica (April 18, 2016). "Stephen's Sausage Roll review – sizzling pork has never been this challenging". The Guardian. Archived from the original on April 27, 2016. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
  4. LeClair, Kyle (April 20, 2016). "Review: Stephen's Sausage Roll". Hardcore Gamer. Retrieved December 12, 2022.
  5. Hancock, Patrick (April 18, 2016). "Review: Stephen's Sausage Roll". Destructoid. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  6. "Stephen's Sausage Roll Critic Reviews for PC". Metacritic. Archived from the original on May 5, 2016. Retrieved May 3, 2016.
  7. "Stephen's Sausage Roll". Edge. No. 294. July 2016. p. 120.
  8. Reeves, Ben (May 2, 2016). "Stephen's Sausage Roll: Meaty Puzzles, No Filler". Game Informer. GameStop. Archived from the original on May 5, 2016. Retrieved May 3, 2016.
  9. LeClair, Kyle (April 20, 2016). "Review: Stephen's Sausage Roll". Hardcore Gamer. Retrieved May 14, 2016.
  10. Couture, Joel (April 18, 2016). "Stephen's Sausage Roll - Cook Up Them Dogs By Solving Brutal Puzzles". IndieGames.com. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  11. Michet, Laura (April 18, 2016). "Stephen's Sausage Roll review". ZAM.com. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  12. Frank, Allegra (April 18, 2016). "Why the creators of QWOP and The Witness are calling Stephen's Sausage Roll one of the best of all time". Polygon. Retrieved April 20, 2016.
  13. "The Edge Awards". Edge. No. 302. February 2017. pp. 76–87.
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