Stephen's Sausage Roll

It's got beautiful aesthetics, intuitive mechanics that feel really satisfying, and some good puzzle design; unfortunately, there's one major thing that makes the game as a whole really unfun to play. In each world, you have to complete *every* level in order to progress - there's no optional content whatsoever. And the puzzles can be incredibly difficult, so sometimes you'll have to spend hours stuck on a single puzzle, otherwise you can't move on. This sucks. It feels awful when you really want to see what's next but can't because of one stupid puzzle. I'm currently stuck in world 3 with one level left to solve, Cold Frustration. This level is so hard that whenever I open the game now, I end up just spending an hour randomly moving sausages, unable to find a solution. And it's not that I don't like hard puzzles - I've 100%ed Baba Is You for example - it's just that I prefer to save them for later, after progressing through the game first. In games like Baba Is You and I Wanna Lockpick, worlds have a clear requirement that's less than the total number of levels in the world, so you can choose which levels you complete. If SSR was designed like this, then Cold Frustration would be an optional bonus level, allowing you to skip it. I'd enjoy the game a lot more if that was the case. As a bonus, here's some very minor things about the game that I also find annoying. This part of the review is not mandatory to read, so you can skip it if you like. [list] [*] You can't go back to a level you've already solved in the hub. Luckily, the game automatically makes a backup of your save file every time you solve a level, so you can reload a previous save file to redo a level. It's very cumbersome but it works. [*] The options menu is very basic. For example, you can't rebind your controls, or turn off the day/night cycle which is distracting sometimes. [*] The camera angle often obscures important puzzle elements. [*] For some reason, the game hides your mouse cursor, which makes it difficult to point to things to help organize your thoughts. [/list]