Stephen's Sausage Roll

[garbed_attic]

Anyone played this?

I've trumpeted Stephen (Increpare) Lavelle's work before in the old 'Indie Art Games Trash' thread. This is only his second commercial release after English Country Tune, but has received absolutely stellar reviews across the board:

10/10 on Destructoid:
http://www.destructoid.com/review-stephen-s-sausage-roll-352649.phtml

5/5 in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/18/stephens-sausage-roll-review-stephen-lavelle-puzzle-game

9/10 on Gamespew:
http://www.gamespew.com/2016/05/stephens-sausage-roll-review/

It's a tile-landscaped puzzle game in which you have to prong giant sausages and rotate them onto grills, cooking every side only once.

It looks glitchy and colourful and kind of ugly like most of Increpare's games from the last 5 years:





Pleasingly the game's website could be put in the 90s internet thread without most people blinking an eye. It has animated gifs, background music and comic sans.

http://www.stephenssausageroll.com/about.html

The game has produced affectionate fan art:





It is also £22.99 on Steam. This has caused lots of rage in the comments threads about being "pay-walled" out of enjoying the game! This has lead to Lavelle creating a sub-forum for "pricing discussions", leading to allegations of censorship!

in a world where e women can show theirr ♥♥♥♥, OR they cant, and here we have this garbage. sausage roll, pixels, here is from the official FAQ

Q $30 for this garbage, wtf?? what is included?
A ur an idiot.

♥♥♥♥ this ♥♥♥♥ i am disgusted and this game likes making me disgusted and THAT is what is truly deplorabkle, that is SADISTIC. literal, SADISM, taking pleasure in others pain, is what this game does, now u can hate me, u can hate the world, u can just hate ♥♥♥♥ing everything, but this is true crime, real scandaal.

Personally I think Lavelle can charge whatever he likes. The man has made over 100 fascinating and aggressively unique free games over the years, which I suspect that a lot of the people complaining haven't played. Some people always get angry when indie developers start charging for their games (my ex got a fair amount of hate when she first started charging for her visual novels over Steam) but with the likes of Humble Bundle there is such a wealth of inexpensive games to play through already, I think players can have a little patience...

Which is my way of saying that I'm waiting for SSR to appear in the Humble Bundle.

[Hollow]

Looks shit.

[Hollow]

Sounds like one of those games where you have to think.

There comes a point in those games where I come up against something that looks complicated and I give up.

[garbed_attic]

Looks shit.

I'd be lying if I said that I liked the aesthetics of most of his recent work (though the glitchiness was a perfect match for Slave of God) but I suspect his anti-aesthetic approach is so that nothing obscures the purity of the puzzle designs... or something. Also, he's kind of a troll.

My feeling is that if one can appreciate Dwarf Fortress for the depth of gameplay, then the same can be true of Lavelle's recent games.

[Plus, games aren't like films - you can't really access their quality to any sensible degree just by reading about them and looking at stills]

---

As for having to think, yeh - it's definitely going to be hardcore logic puzzling, having played other puzzle games by him.

[Hollow]

I'm not a big fan of that 'minecraft' look.

Minecraft is the only place it looks good.

[Ignatius_S]

...It is also £22.99 on Steam. This has caused lots of rage in the comments threads about being "pay-walled" out of enjoying the game! This has lead to Lavelle creating a sub-forum for "pricing discussions", leading to allegations of censorship!....

Mmm, that's gilding the lily somewhat – that screenshot isn't that representative for a start.

In the pricing discussions, there are plenty of people who say that has defended the price. Most of the discussions on that subforum are very short threads (one or two posts) and the main discussion area is a lot more busy. Admittedly, the discussions were over a longer period, but there was a lot more vitriol for Prison Architect and can't see anything that really makes the discussions about this game stand out from others.

Although the price may seem high at first, people who have played the game seem to think it's worth it and that's reflected the Steam user reviews or any discussion by people who have actually played it.

[brat-sampson]

I saw a guy streaming this on twitch when it came out and helped him with a couple of puzzles. It's genius, but it's also fucking nails. The first zone you're just rotating and rolling, but in the second you're sticking and stacking and bridging and oh God. There's basically no tutorial so you find you just discover mechanics by experimenting, which is really awesome and smart and feels great, but there were a couple of times when my jaw dropped and I started thinking about the implications of these new mechanics in future puzzles and just kinda started twitching.

I don't think I'll actually buy it at that price and with so many other things to be doing right now but it's probably worth it if you want a real challenge.

[Hollow]

I saw a guy streaming this on twitch when it came out and helped him with a couple of puzzles. It's genius, but it's also fucking nails. The first zone you're just rotating and rolling, but in the second you're sticking and stacking and bridging and oh God. There's basically no tutorial so you find you just discover mechanics by experimenting, which is really awesome and smart and feels great, but there were a couple of times when my jaw dropped and I started thinking about the implications of these new mechanics in future puzzles and just kinda started twitching.

I don't think I'll actually buy it at that price and with so many other things to be doing right now but it's probably worth it if you want a real challenge.

My brain hurts just reading about it.

[garbed_attic]

Mmm, that's gilding the lily somewhat – that screenshot isn't that representative for a start.

Yeah I was a little bit... but it is a pretty funny post! :p

[Ignatius_S]

Yeah I was a little bit... but it is a pretty funny post! :p

It is - and worth posting!

[hewantstolurkatad]

It's the expensive thing in the latest Humble Bundle, still that's well under half it's normal price with some other games thrown in.

[brat-sampson]

Picked this up in the Steam sale along with some other gubbins for another thread. I'm useless, but I'm slowly making progress through the first area, getting more of a feel for how sausages behave and already getting the tingle that comes from feeling like this game's going to be more than willing to stay just enough steps ahead of me for the duration to make every stage or new mechanic seem impossible and unmanageable riiiiight up to the moment when it's not, and you burst through into the cool night air, breathing heavily, call a taxi and close the game, out, and safe again for now, but ready to prepare supplies for the next delve.

[Bhazor]

Really enjoyed this. Fantastic design where you'll just stumble into new mechanics and make some insane leaps of logic. There's no unlocks or upgrades you just find out new things you can do with a sausage and a prick.

Sadly some of the puzzles get tedious. They lose the flash of inspiration and become more mechanical. It adds a couple new ones at the end floating platforms being my favourite but theres still some puzzles with no clever solutions just a slow grind.