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Stephen's Sausage Roll remains one of the most influential puzzle games
- npinsker 6mo agoStephen's Sausage Roll is my favorite puzzle game. But more interestingly -- it's a near-universal opinion within puzzle communities that SSR is one of the all-time best. I've never heard of such a strong consensus in other subgenres of game. Unlike other consensus "bests", it's relatively unknown to the public (which is understandable for many reasons). It's very likely that if you're a puzzle game devotee, you will fall in love with SSR; but at the same time, if you don't have experience with puzzle games, you'll very likely hate it. As a result, I've always thought it's an interesting window into how we value "taste" and "mastery", how too much mastery can actually distance us from one another, and what meaning there is in designing games for an ideal world shaped around ourselves, versus the world we actually live in. It's well-known that puzzle games sell badly on Steam, and I think part of that is that difficulty and struggle is an acquired taste. Most try to paper over that gap with nice soundtracks and graphics, "hooky" mechanics, and narrative. SSR is so interesting because it contrasts so violently: it's ascetic, has no obvious hook, and offers nothing but difficulty and struggle, and the best feeling in the world if you decide to push through it anyway.
- kibwen 6mo agoStephen's Sausage Roll is great, but even among sokobanlikes, I'm loathe to call it the undisputed all-time best when it's up against Baba Is You.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Cpoll 6mo agoSSR walked so Baba could run In favor of SSR: The design is more vertical than Baba, it explores fewer mechanics but with greater depth. And it's entirely spatial, whereas Baba's solutions are sometimes a matter of wordplay, with the sokoban just a formality. I like Baba better, but I'm not sure if it's the better game.
- jldugger 6mo ago> SSR walked rolled, surely
- neop 6mo agoOverall, I probably agree that Baba is You is a better game, but I think what makes Stephen's Sausage Roll receive so much praise is that the puzzle design is incredibly tight. It's a very straightforward concept and the core mechanic does not change between the first and the last level. But the puzzles are expertly crafted in a way that as you progress through the game you naturally come across situations where you think you know everything about the game and then it surprises you with a new mechanic that you did not expect. Baba is You ramps up as you go to, but the ramping up is mostly done by the game giving you new tools to work with. Plus, the amount of interesting puzzles you can do with the mechanics of Baba is You is virtually endless, whereas SSG makes you feel like the game squeezed all the possible gameplay out of moving sausages around.
- ghostly_s 6mo agoSome of my favorites are puzzle games but I guess I’m not a member of the "community" (is there a message board?) and I’m surprised to hear there's any consensus on anything- my experience has been that most puzzle fans have a very specific subgenre they enjoy rather than enjoying "puzzle games" as a whole. I've had such little luck finding new games I enjoy that I don't pay any attention to puzzle game recommendations u less it reminds me of a specific game I already like. I've played several games in this genre (didn't know it had a name!) and they are very much not my thing.
- tobr 6mo ago”Thinky puzzle games” is a specific subgenre and community, revolving mostly around variations of sokoban, but really has an appetite for any game that deeply explores how a few mechanics can be combined and lead to interesting consequences.
- the__alchemist 6mo agoSame reaction - I love puzzle games (The Witness, Talos principle, Blue Prince, Myst series, Baba is You, Antichamber, Obra Dinn, Opus Magnum etc), but haven't heard of this. I guess I should give it a try!
- roblh 6mo agoAnd Void Stranger. I’m surprised not to see it mentioned anywhere in the comments.
- iqml2568 6mo agoI've opened the comments just to Ctrl+F it and... only 4 hits. Depressing.
- joshu 6mo agopatrick’s parabox, too
- ehnto 6mo agoVery similar taste in games, and I had heard of it but wrote it off as a simple puzzle game, kind of in the mobile-game-esque throwaway genre. I must have been mistaken.
- Twirrim 6mo agoIt would surely sell more if people would actually explain what the game is, without using niche words like "sokoban". The article talks about how the trailer for it didn't really show anything about the game either, which arguably gets you into pretentious/artistic territory. After reading the linked article, and the comments here I still have zero clue about the game. It's a puzzle game involving sausages and a large fork does nothing to describe what kind of puzzles they might be.
- lisper 6mo ago> It would surely sell more if people would actually explain what the game is And even more if figuring out how to buy it wasn't a challenging puzzle in its own right.
- x______________ 6mo agoLet me DGG that for you. Even dgg got this one right the first time! https://store.steampowered.com/app/353540/Stephens_Sausage_Roll/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/353540/Stephens_Sausage_R... On sale for 6$ at 80% off.
- gpt5 6mo agoThe game is about rolling sausages over grills to cook them on both sides. However, that's completely unrelated to why it's so acclaimed. This game introduces a very small set of controls and mechanics (you basically only have the arrow keys, and initially can just move around), and combines it with minimally small, yet surprisingly hard puzzles. Every puzzles is distilled to its smallest form, and involves a genuinely satisfying eureka moment. The game then explores every possible hidden way to use the minimal set of mechanics introduced, before introducing a new mechanic (e.g. early on you'll be able to suddenly 'stab' you sausages which allows you to move them around differently. So you become a master of the game as you progress. The problem for new players is that it's deceptively difficult to solve even the simplest puzzles + it encourages you to explore and learn how things work instead of giving you hints. This makes inexperienced players abandon it way before it fully reveals itself (which takes many hours into the game). What I suggest is if you are new and are frustrated, find a Youtuber that solved it so that you can look at what they did. This way you won't get stuck to the point of leaving it, while still allowing you to fully enjoy it.
- airstrike 6mo agoI'll take Portal over it any day of the week
- aniforprez 6mo agoPortal is incredibly basic in its puzzles. There's barely any challenge even in the second game. Stephen's Sausage Rolls pushes its basic mechanics to the absolute limits and made me think significantly harder than Portal ever did. Not that Portal is a bad game mind you but it's not very deep as a puzzle game
- xnorswap 6mo agoI love Portal, but it feels more like a tutorial than a puzzle game, because the tolerances on each solution are so large. It's a fantastic game, one of the all-time greats, and there are tricky parts to execute, but it's not particularly challenging in terms of puzzling.
- joshu 6mo agowhat are some other games that belong to this group?
- AndrewOMartin 6mo agoI always felt Deadly Rooms of Death (my preferred version being the free "Architect's Edition", but all are good, and many have better QoL features) was one of the puzzle games which was essentially "discovered" rather than invented. Simple turn-based eight-direction grid movement, where one of your adjacent squares contains your "sword" and you can rotate your sword around yourself one square per-turn. Kill (deterministic and 1hp) monsters by moving your sword on to all the monsters move after your move, and "complete" a room by killing all monsters. There's quite an active community (at least there was when I was in to it) but I've rarely heard it mentioned outside of the community. Edit: I'm happy to see some other references to DroD in this thread.
- Slow_Dog 6mo agoA Good Snowman Is Hard To Build and A Monster's Expedition are games in the same genre with much better presentation than Sausage Roll.
- Mond_ 6mo agoNo shade thrown, but I always preferred my game with some amount of story or artistic ambition beyond mere puzzling. I'd take Void Stranger or probably even Deadly Rooms of Death: The Second Sky over Stephen's Sausage Roll any day, I imagine.
- gorgoiler 6mo agoIf you or anyone else reading this haven’t finished Stephen’s Sausage Roll to the very end, including reading all the story book paragraphs along the way (which increase in poignancy and frequency as the game winds to a close) then I strongly encourage you to do so. No spoilers! de•li•cious saus•ag•es
- why_at 6mo agoYeah same here. I love puzzle games but there needs to be something to it besides puzzles for puzzles sake for me. I've seen this game recommended many times but I've never played it because I feel like I would get bored very fast. Same with Zachtronics games.
- fyrabanks 6mo agoi so badly want to spoil the story of stephen's sausage roll for you. i feel bad even spoiling that there is a story. play it.
- Boxxed 6mo agoDeadly Rooms of Death is criminally underrated and generally unknown. Journey to Rooted Hold is personally my DRoD of choice.
- amavect 6mo agoI love pure puzzles and completed SSR. The story consists of sign plaques that narrate the history of the fictional world, and how your player character fulfills their place in the world through the main goal of cooking sausages. A bit unique and interesting, though not particularly complex, and you can guess the twist before it reveals. In other words, a puzzle game with a short story interspersed, perhaps 99% puzzles and 1% reading. The music consists of relaxing algorithmic ambience. The artistic ambition aims for surrealism and minimalism. I like it a lot, but I recommend against it for you.
- rodarmor 6mo agoI wish that Opera Omnia, also by Stephen Lavelle, got more attention. It is mind-blowing exploration of the idea of propaganda and revisionist history, which somehow also manages to be engaging and fun, with an incredibly unique core mechanic.
- nemomarx 6mo agohttps://www.increpare.com/game/opera-omnia.html https://www.increpare.com/game/opera-omnia.html This one? It looks interesting but definitely a lot less visible than SSR and not on storefronts or etc, right?
- freedomben 6mo agoFYI it's on sale on Steam today: $5.99
- jason-festa 6mo ago[dead]
- Waterluvian 6mo agoMy list of must play puzzle games is far too short: Portal, Portal 2, Demon’s Souls, and Baba is You. It’s amazing to me that I’ve never heard of a game this lauded.
- GolDDranks 6mo agoLittle known, but a warm recommendation, both for the puzzles and atmosphere: The Swapper. (disclaimer: I did some coding work for this game)
- huhtenberg 6mo agoGive "Please Don't Touch Anything" a try.
- kibibu 6mo agoNo "The Witness"? Not incredibly challenging, but I very much enjoyed its blend of puzzling and aesthetic.
- VorpalWay 6mo agoPersonally, I had wanted a new Myst, and The Witness wasn't that, and so I was a bit disappointed. Obduction was released a year or two later and it was similar to the Myst I remember from my childhood and it was also a good game. I strongly recommend it. That said, The Witness isn't a bad game as such, though the puzzles do get a bit repetitive in my opinion. I prefer more variety rather than hyper focus on one type of puzzles.
- Waterluvian 6mo agoFor me, Outer Wilds finally got the Myst feel right.
- VorpalWay 6mo agoInteresting, I had passed it by when I heard it had a time limit and reset mechanic (not unlike Zelda Majora's Mask). I hated that mechanic in Majora's Mask (and I never finished that game), it made the game feel stressful to me. I prefer games where I can play slow and deliberate. If there is a time mechanic it should be turn based, not real time. (Or it should be a very short time based system such as "run across the room to hit the other button, the cost of failing is 10 seconds of trying again, not 10 minutes".)
- lanfeust6 6mo agoGood sokoban, but maybe my fastest rage/impatience quit on a puzzle game at 10-ish hours. I find it too difficult.
- kderbe 6mo agoThat's my verdict on Stephen's Sausage Roll too. My personal favorite sokoban is Patrick's Parabox (the name is an obvious nod to SSR) because its puzzles have a gentler and finer-grained difficulty ramp.
- zahlman 6mo ago> the name is an obvious nod Huh, I've seen both games (though both are very fringe to my overall experience) and didn't make that connection.
- smrq 6mo agoThis is more or less my take, but at least for me it's not about the level of difficulty exactly. It just feels very transparently like exploring a state space, where the "a-ha" moments just boil down to breaking into a different neighborhood of that space. To be clear, the puzzles are very well designed, and also very hard; but I don't find solving them satisfying at ALL. Compare with Baba Is You, where the "a-ha"s feel to me more like having a grand insight than finding the right very specific sequence of moves. Put another way, it's been years since I played Baba and I can still remember the key insights to some of the sneakier puzzles. I couldn't even begin to do that for SSR.
- ktallett 6mo agoKula world was and always will be my favourite of these sort of games. Simple yet really challenging.
- tmtvl 6mo agoKula World (known as 'Roll Away' across the pond and as Kula Quest in Japan) is fantastic; but it's not a Sokoban type of game, more of a platformer with spacial puzzles. For a Sokoban-type game with Kula World-esque 3D movement you could check out Kiki the Nanobot.
- gowld 6mo agoIs this what Jonathan Blow is trying to copy with Sinking Star?
- turkeyboi 6mo agoOost does incorporate elements that were tried in a puzzlescript game “mirror isle” and sean t barret’s “promesst”. Dont think anything directly from this sausage one.
- omcnoe 6mo agoTrying to copy is a bit harsh, but he has credited it as an inspiration for what's possible within the Sokoban format. I believe he was a playtester for SSR before it released, mid The Witness development.
- cvoss 6mo agoCopy, certainly not. But Blow was an enthusiastic promoter of the game when it came out and held it out as a standard of excellence in puzzle game design.
- jrz53 6mo agoNot sure, but Sinking Star it is an (authorized) amalgamation of pre-existing sokoban games so there's some relation there. From this post by one of the original devs: https://bsky.app/profile/draknek.bsky.social/post/3m7qybidq7k2s https://bsky.app/profile/draknek.bsky.social/post/3m7qybidq7...
- iamwil 6mo agoBlow originally did Order of Sinking Star as a quick side project. He thought that by using these pre-existing games as a starting point, he'd get it done quicker. But then he decided to experiment with the combinatorics of these mechanics that the game blew up so much in scope that the original starting point didn't help at all.
- jcl 6mo agoPerhaps a more direct relation: most of those preexisting games were made in puzzlescript, which (per the article) was also made by the author of Stephen’s Sausage Roll.
- tantalor 6mo ago> most influential puzzle games ever Never heard of it.
- binbag 6mo agoIt's a perfect game.
- kimos 6mo agoI completely understand how this game is brilliant and a perfect puzzle game. But it was so hard and frustrating I could not play it.
- coldpie 6mo agoYeah same. I got to like the 3rd puzzle, got stuck, and never went back. I respect it, but just not for me.
- rjh29 6mo agoAll of the critically acclaimed puzzle games seem to be sokobans. I have no idea why sokoban is so popular; I find it very tedious to move blocks around manually, especially if I already know the solution and I'm just making it happen. For me games like Artisan of Glimmith, LOK Digital, Tiling Town and Lingo are the most fun, followed by deductive games like The Roottrees Are Dead and The Case of the Golden Idol.
- airforce1 6mo agoThis one is critically acclaimed and is not a sokoban: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2721890/oo/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2721890/oo/
- Jtarii 6mo ago>All of the critically acclaimed puzzle games seem to be sokobans Wouldn't really agree considering: Antichamber, The Witness, Talos Principle, Manifold Garden, Portal, Zachtronics, Tunic, Blue Prince, Return of the Obra Dinn, Seance of Blake Manor, a bunch more I could list.
- acbart 6mo agoTunic is such an incredible experience. If you ever enjoyed the original Zelda and its manual, you simply must play tunic. It captures something incredible. And it has some amazing twists.
- ozonhulliet 6mo agoBut it's hardly what I would consider a puzzle game.
- loopmonster 6mo agoYou could consider it a jigsaw puzzle game.
- 6mo ago
- LandenLove 6mo agoI recently watched "A Course on Puzzle Game Design" by Matthew VanDevander and he mentioned Stephen's Sausage Roll a few times. https://youtu.be/85mAmP4k1Co?si=yuxpJ2xhkH7r_eo3 https://youtu.be/85mAmP4k1Co?si=yuxpJ2xhkH7r_eo3 The video has lots of helpful information for puzzle game design. I have started to incorporate some of that knowledge into my own puzzle game https://qcgeneral29.itch.io/lets-learn https://qcgeneral29.itch.io/lets-learn
- agnishom 6mo agoIf anyone enjoys snarky long videos critiquing games, they might enjoy Joseph Anderson's review of this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dsQtBHk0eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dsQtBHk0eE
- physicsguy 6mo agoAs a British person, this is confusing since the game doesn't involve a sausage roll!
- lewispollard 6mo agoThe developer is also British; it's a pun because you roll sausages in the game.
- ido 6mo agoI believe he is Irish.
- lewispollard 6mo agoMy bad, it appears you're right, an Irish national based in London.
- physicsguy 6mo agoI was joking.
- ENadyr 6mo agoNot surprised, he’s a friend whom I watched build the game over a few years in the 2010s. He was EXTREMELY thorough in the playtesting, it set such an unrealistic expectations for me with games I play now
- Hnrobert42 6mo agoSeems like a variant of Towers of Hanoi.
- jmiskovic 6mo agoTwo recommendations for puzzle lovers that like more open ended challenges: Deadly Rooms of Death has same movement style as SSR. It is amazing series of games each with unique mechanics. It often evokes that feeling of being in active communication with puzzle author through evolving level design. I've also enjoyed Rhell: Warped Worlds & Troubled Times, a recently released gem. It is completely opposite of SSR, with how broadly you can approach the puzzles depending on which spells you have available (with many parts becoming too easy if you postpone them). Many games design their puzzles with a single solution. Rhell takes approach of "you cannot pass here, let's see you try" which is a fun spin on the genre. I also enjoyed how you gain abilities through game. In many modern games you unlock higher jumping by collecting skill points and spending them on skill tree. Here the same ability is emergently and organically incorporated into game mechanics. Over the playthrough the player collects new spell runes; at one point you gain rune to apply the spells to yourself. By assigning a combo strong-raise-on-self to a hotkey, you empower the character with the higher jump ability and stop using the normal jump. There's all kind of crazy and innovative ideas in there and the entire game is delightful.
- babuskov 6mo agoSurprised nobody mentioned Fish Fillets 2, which is a top 3 puzzle game imho. My list: 1. Antichamber 2. Fish Fillets 2 3. Baba is You 4. Ittle Dew (esp. the Master Dungeon) 5. An Architect's Adventure 6. Cosmic Express 7. Talos Principle 8. Stephen's Sausage Roll 9. Portal 10. Cocoon Fish Fillets 2 looks simple, but it's one of the toughest puzzle games out there. Especially getting the stars on each level. I love it because the rules are simple, everything's there on one screen, but figuring it out requires a lot of out of the box thinking.
- cowpig 6mo agoA couple of my favourites to add to your list: - Patrick's Parabox - Blue Prince
- LexGray 6mo agoAbandonware at this point I enjoyed Microsoft Pandora's Box as plain old jigsaw fun. It seems to scream for multi-touch support and higher resolution but it was left to rot.