"Every level requires you to make a new realization in order to solve it, which is extremely rare in puzzle games, notable or not." " is a huge game, but you never are faced with the same problem twice," Foddy explained. That's important in helping players not to get stuck on one puzzle endlessly - something that is still not totally unavoidable in the maddeningly hard Stephen's Sausage Roll.īut the puzzles are highly varied, despite them all relying on the sausage-flipping mechanic. Players can complete puzzles in any order, assuming they can access them on the board. Lavelle's interest in crafting a continuous puzzle environment is apparent in the finished product. Watching his timeline from 2013 until now is seeing the game unfold, slowly approaching its final state.Ĭome on, Stephen. Since that early 2013 tweet, Lavelle has shared screenshots and other production odds and ends. Invoking Mario in a conversation about Stephen's Sausage Roll speaks to how highly regarded the project is. "The game is extremely playful and irreverent in a number of ways, just like Stephen himself - so I feel like the name fits pretty well, and so does the website."īut could that title throw people off, I asked? Could the name Stephen's Sausage Roll distract from the game itself, causing people not to take it seriously? "I'm not sure it's that important for people to take games seriously, unless the games are serious," Foddy said. It's a joke-y title, but one that Foddy sees as fitting. But christening this project might be his biggest contribution to Lavelle's design portfolio thus far. (Although his website plays host to a hundred-plus games, English Country Tune remained his only commercial release prior to Sausage I hope you call it "Stephen’s Sausage Roll"įoddy and Lavelle had exchanged feedback on each other's work for years Foddy described this as typical of the indie game scene. In January 2013, he tweeted about a game he'd been working on, one of his first since the release of English Country Tune. Lavelle doesn't comment publicly on his works, but his Twitter serves as a development log of sorts. It's hard to say when, exactly, Stephen's Sausage Roll entered production. He also knows the Stephen's Sausage Roll project more intimately than most - in fact, he coined its memorable title. As both a New York University Game Center professor and veteran in challenging game design himself, Foddy has the credentials to make such a claim. "In many ways it is the most ambitious puzzle game anyone has ever made," Foddy told Polygon in an email. They're calling it "the Dark Souls of puzzle games" and even one of the best games of all-time. They and others aren't just singing Stephen's Sausage Roll's praises, however. With an odd title, strange core concept and unimpressive graphics, it might not be immediately clear why Stephen's Sausage Roll has already won fans like Bennett Foddy ( QWOP) and Jonathan Blow ( Braid, The Witness). Getting it right, however, results in an undeniable feeling of satisfaction. Timing your pokes, prods and spins of the sausage - at least one or more at a time - is extraordinarily hard. Turning it too many times will burn it, however the game board is also surrounded by water, and knocking the sausage into the pool also results in a game over. Players can move across the puzzle grid clockwise or counter-clockwise, turning the sausage over a grill to get it completely cooked on both sides. Armed with a barbecue fork, he must perfectly grill sausage links twice his size in a series of puzzles in order to make his way around the map - which in itself operates like a puzzle. Now available on Steam, players assume the role of a small man stuck on a vast island. Today marks the release of what some puzzle fans are calling one of the genre's most difficult games yet: Stephen's Sausage Roll, the latest game and second retail release from designer Stephen Lavelle.
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