I liked puzzle games before playing Stephen's Sausage Roll, but this game crawled inside my brain and turned it up to an 11. Even as I'm out of it it's hard to describe the sheer extent to which this game held my attention during the about-a-month duration I spent going through it.

Sokoban games are something that's sort of distantly fascinated me for a while now. The idea of such a simple game concept having such an involved niche fanbase nearly 40 years on is astounding to me. While I still haven't played very many, the way this game takes such a simple conceptual difference from "base Sokoban" and runs and runs and runs with it is astounding. It's the kind of game that uniquely rewards a blind playthrough so I'm kind of being vague on purpose; but the things this game teaches you and the ways it teaches you to them are utterly mind expanding. By the end of the game you have such a diverse repertoire of ways to interact with the objects in a level and such an intuition for the initially awkward controls that it is shocking.

If I have one complaint (which is completely opposite to most reception I've seen of the game), the last set of puzzles definitely jumps the shark a bit and ends up the worst part of the game; it feels, at least to me, that the game designer felt a grand final hurrah was in place, and this leads to the final mechanical pepperings feeling simultaneously way too terse and way too long. My favourite "worlds" as I played the game were the first one - figuring out the bare essentials of the game is very specifically fantastic - and the third and fourth ones - a happy medium of mechanical complexity which leads to, in my mind, the most brain-busting puzzles in the game.

TL;DR - Play Stephen's Sausage Roll!!! It looks a bit expensive but if you have any love for puzzle games it is worth every cent and more

shelving this indefinitely because it's very genius but doesn't click too well as a puzzle game for me. got up to The Great Tower and called it there.
for as simple as the systems on display here are, I don't think I can internalize them well enough to inherently know why I need to do what I need to do. only a few times did I feel like I was actually solving a puzzle instead of brute-forcing my way through all of the wrong solutions, and not once could I look at the start of a puzzle and understand how certain moves would result in it becoming solved. maybe this is a classic "I'm just too dumb to get it," but I felt too dissatisfied after solving puzzles to want to push forward any more.

Stephen's Sausage Roll has no right being as good as it is. It's a very simple game presented very simply and... I mean, come on, would you expect a good game to be hiding behind that title and cover art? And yet Stephen's Sausage Roll is probably the best Sokoban-like I've ever played.

I normally get very frustrated by this kind of game and get very liberal with cheating when the going gets tough... but I just didn't find this to be the case here? Stephen's Sausage Roll is hard, it's real hard, but it feels fair. The simple mechanics mean there isn't too much space for smashing your head against a wall for trial and error, and there are very few red herrings like there often is in other Sokobans: if you see something in Stephen's Sausage Roll, you can be damn sure you'll be using it. There's no excellent gimmick here like in something like Baba is You, but the balance and puzzle design really make up for it and make this a special little game.

Well... that all held true for most of it's runtime at least. Each world gradually introduces new mechanics which you are guided to discover on your own in an honestly pretty organic way, and each of course makes the game more complex; while the difficulty curve is honestly quite shallow and steady, it just never stops going up. And it started losing me around World 5; there was too much going on and it became more frustrating than enjoyable, which is a shame because the early and mid-game portions would rank up there in my top experiences in any puzzle game.

But yes, I still recommend this one pretty highly overall. It's remarkably well made for what it is and definitely worth experiencing for yourself, but I would not blame you for tapping out once the lategame really starts ramping up.

Absolutely brilliant Sokoban-style puzzle game. The controls are difficult to get used to but their limitations are extremely deliberate and used to great effect—sometimes figuring out how to awkwardly maneuver your 1x2 character through a tight space with tank controls is the puzzle. Much like A Monster's Expedition, it's a game that rather elegantly does a lot with as few unique elements as possible; rather than constantly introducing brand-new mechanics, each set of levels is based around teasing out some aspect of the existing elements that was always technically present but only reveals itself when you arrange or interact with them in a certain way. I'm being vague about it, but that's because those moments of discovery (either when you reach the point where they become required, or if you stumble into them slightly earlier as I did a couple times) are really cool and absolutely worth experiencing for yourself.

This weird little game took me years to finish. I probably could have beaten it faster, but looking back on it now, I’m glad I took my time. It’s the perfect game to slowly chip away at it a few puzzles at a time.

Stephen’s Sausage Roll is the kind of game that you can really only play once, at least for the full proper experience of it. The actual process of learning how to play is so rewarding and such an intrinsic part of the game. In the beginning, even the simplest things take so much effort and brain power. But this game rewired my brain. It’s kinda like how people start seeing interlocked shapes everywhere after playing Tetris for a while. I started moving differently in my dreams. This game made me feel like a genius in a way that no other game has. It gets to a point where you start planning ten, twenty steps ahead like some kind of chess grandmaster.

Maybe the biggest fault of Stephen’s Sausage Roll is that the difficulty tapers off in the final few hours. On top of that, the final puzzle is unusually straightforward and repetitive when compared to most other puzzles in the game. But I suppose it’s inevitable after spending so much time getting familiar with the movement and mechanics. It just made for a slightly disappointing finale to an otherwise fantastic game.

I had a great time with Stephen’s Sausage Roll and would easily recommend it for anyone who enjoys a nice brain workout.

Ein sehr elegantes Puzzle-Game, aber wohl auch eines der am wenigsten ansprechenden Spielen die ich mochte.
Es gibt ein paar Sachen die ich an dem Spiel bemängele. Wie bereits angesprochen finde ich das Spiel ästhetisch etwas abstoßend und die Steuerung ist unhandlich, weshalb man etwas Zeit braucht mit ihr vertraut zu werden.
Das merkwürdigste an dem Spiel ist wie die Handlung implementiert wurde. Für ca. 70% des Spiels wird einem kaum was erzählt, aber im letzten Bereich wird dann plötzlich erklärt was das alles zu bedeuten hat und es ist eines der dämlichsten Erklärungen die ich je erlebt habe. Talos Principle hat bewiesen, dass man Puzzles mit tieferer Thematik verbinden kann, aber bei Sausage Roll wurde es so unbeholfen gemacht, dass ich echt nicht versteh was der Gedanke dahinter war.
Die unhandliche Steuerung ist tatsächlich die größte Stärke des Spiels, da es den Rätseln seine Form gibt. Durch die eingeschränkten Möglichkeiten kann man häufig relativ gut schlussfolgern was zu tun ist, indem man feststellt, was unmöglich ist. Die meisten Rätsel sind dadurch ziemlich clever, aber nicht überwältigend. Gegen Ende werden die Puzzles teilweise etwas anstrengend, da ihr Umfang etwas groß geworden ist.
Bei Puzzle-Games kommt es letztendlich darauf an, wie angenehm und herausfordernd die Rätsel sind, und in dem Bereich ist dieses Spiel eines der besten die ich kenne.

got exactly to the halfway point with 110 sausages to my name before getting really demoralized by the difficulty and decided that maybe i'll sit this one out.

i love this game the way a man might love his wife after like 30 years of marriage, which is to say, i love you but oh my GOD woman leave me ALONE. can't lay down to sleep without all these visions of sausages being grilled haunting me. it's super cool when a game's unconventional movement system gets so ingrained into my head that it starts constantly being in the back of my mind even when i'm not playing the game (it's basically just the tetris effect but for this) and there were definitely moments where i'd just be having lunch until suddenly the last puzzle i was struggling with just clicks and i hurry with my meal just to rush to the computer and solve it and it turns out i was right. so much of this game just works and if i had a few more ganglia in my brain i'd probably be writing this review after actually seeing the ending of the game, but there were too many moving parts that i didn't know what to do with in the end.

genius game but I'M supposed to be the one beating it not the other way around!!!!!!

I HAVE DEFEATED MY DEMONS. ON ATTEMPT NUMBER 2 I DEFEATED MY DEMONS!!!!!!!

This is one of the best puzzle games I've ever played, please do not give up permanently on this. If you get stuck, come back, maybe you'll come back in a day, maybe in a few weeks, but this game is absolutely genius.

"Cooking isn't a sacrifice from the living to the dead - it's a gift from the dead to the living."

It is certainly an ingenious and wonderfully creative product.

That being said, I can't say I really "enjoyed" grilling these sausages or felt like I was really getting much from the experience aside from the satisfaction of completing very difficult tasks.

I admire this creation! But I'd be lying if I said I liked it.

This is an obscure puzzler that requires a substantial time and effort commitment to finish. It is challenging and rewarding with lessons that build on each other like no other puzzle game I have ever played. Its controls are jarring at first but your simple moveset (literally just moving) helps you adjust rather quick. It is unbelievable that a game with so few "moves" can have so much complexity and for so long as well. Inclusions such as an undo button and "instantly leave level" option allow for mistakes to be fixed quickly and levels to be returned to later easily.

I wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone who very much enjoys solving puzzles and is okay sitting on them for a while to figure them out, but if you are only somewhat into them or are very casual when it comes to playing them, I do not recommend this game. I only say this again since Stephen's Sausage Roll is quite hardcore, I am not kidding when I say it is a difficult puzzle game.

S-class puzzle game if you can stomach the brutal difficulty.
The mechanics are exceptionally unique and deep but pretty compact, never changing baseline things like you or the sausages. It handles progression expertly, gradually "unlocking" said mechanics with minor layout changes; a certain arrangement of walls or some extra platform height will set apart a section 2 level and a section 5 level. The learning process is also great, giving you 0 information and letting you experiment on your own to figure out the rules. It makes for a very challenging but extremely satisfying gameplay loop.
However, there's not as much to praise about its artistic side. It pulls off the eerie theme fine and the story is passable, if a bit predictable, but there's not enough to elevate the game. The music is never in the green and sometimes pretty distracting, which is not ideal for tracks you will hear for hours as you glare at hard puzzles.
These gripes pale in comparison to the puzzles' value, though, and really just bar it from a perfect score.

In the first half of the game or so it's pretty clear that you are playing one of the best puzzle games ever created by being clearly presented with a fully transparent physical logic that will never play no cheap magic tricks and do what a lot, or all, puzzle games always seek and never reach, keep showing level after level defying your conception of what can even be done with very simple rules every single time.

Now, earlier for some, later for others, you're going to get stuck. That's fine. About that time, the game clearly reveals itself as a masterpiece.

It’s at those times that the background elements will come to the foreground. While standing still with a total lack of ideas, searching for anything to hold onto, you’ll start appreciating the colors of the day and night cycle, the flower leaves rising with your steps, the ever present synth that rarely makes a full melody, the fire crackling, the waves threatening your sausages... You’ll even give it a rest, go take a walk, go live. And you’ll return without expecting it. The map is static, you know the exact consequence of an action before the movement, with the game closed too. So you’ll go to sleep and replace the sheep to count with the level that’s been there for days, already burnt into you. Take advantage of the lack of logic to build the possibilities back.

I guess there is something about frustration and wisdom (or knowledge) here, but it’s related to a particular greater topic: inspiration. And the patience it needs. You cannot invoke it by stomping against the same wall again and again in the same way. You can only clear your head, give it time, distance and hope that when inspiration comes you will be ready to welcome it properly.

Keep dreaming those sausages.