The designers behind a hit sausage-dueling video game hope Steam launch will take it furter

Life is a series of fights, and I simply lost my last one versus 4 gyoza on a skewer. It was an unanticipated blow, due to the fact that truthfully, who could have anticipated me– a springy, respectably proportioned hotdog– to lose versus a relatively inflexible spear of little, simple dumplings? This is my battle in Sausage Legend: Arenaa mobile video game with an extremely basic property: battle with other gamers’ sausages and win.

On the surface area, it appears like a garden-variety mobile video game filled with bugs (it is). The distinction in between Sausage Legend and a short lived concept you had after exaggerating it on edibles is that 3.5 million individuals have actually played Sausage Legendit has actually been on Japanese nationwide tv, and it is shockingly enjoyable. And with an approaching release on Steam, it’s poised to get back at larger.

As befits fight that needs knocking 2 wieners at each other, Sausage Legend is a greatly physics-based video game. Each sausage is thrust onto the battleground by a fork; gamers tumble their sausages around to bludgeon each other to death. As somebody with the vestigial perceptiveness of a 13-year-old shitposter, I enjoy this ballet of well-timed jabs and opportunistic ripostes, all while I appreciate the durability and flexibility of my simple meat sword.

I combat lightning-infused mixed drink sausages and weisswurst. There are brats and goteborgs, along with pickled cucumber and a piece of pepperoni pizza (which, I think technically includes sausage). There are more than 50 various sausages and other food products, each with various benefits– length, strength, unique powers, and so on. My health bar smugly declines to renew in between rounds. I discover that eventually, I will experience a chrome-covered metal sausage that appears like something out of the inmost pit of T-1000 Terminator fanfic. There are hardly any guidelines, there bore advertisements, and when I resume the video game, it has actually not conserved my weak development. And yet, I long for more sausage.

For designer Tadaki Tani, the motivation behind Sausage Legend didn’t originated from having fun with his food.” In the start, we discovered giraffes battling on YouTube and the giraffes were’hanging’their heads around and round, which’s how we got the very first concept [for the game],”he describes through a translator. The very first model of the video game utilized giraffes, however the battling scenes didn’t rather exercise. Why not attempt sausages? Therefore, in 2016, Sausage Legend was born.

Tani is the CEO of MilkCorp, a studio he established in 2009 that provides meme-y mobile video games like My Grizzly Bear Sleep In Officeand Pollen Heaven My Grizzly Bear is precisely what it seems like– a totally free grizzly bear care simulator whose main page (properly) checks out, “The only individuals who would think about doing something like that are Youtubers desperate for views.” Pollen Heaven is a self-described “ridiculous video game” based upon Tani’s own hay fever. Sausage Legend: Arena 2its Japan-only follow up, includes a middle ages story world where servants should sausage-duel for their liberty. The advancement group includes Tani, and another individual.

The greatest increase to Sausage Legend originated from a specific niche corner of the web: a Hololive vtuber called Oozora Subaru, who ended up being besotted with the initial video game and plays it fanatically to the pleasure (or irritation, sometimes) of her fans. (We did connect to Hololive’s moms and dad business Cover for remark, however it did not react.) In 2021, Subaru got her own famous sausage in Sausage Legend 2styled like a duck, which is her casual mascot. Her fellow vtuber Hakui Koyori likewise got an unique sausage: the “Koyori Skin of the Large Intestine” sausage which sported a fluffy pink tail. “There are a great deal of individuals playing since of her,” Tani states, keeping in mind that it took around 10 of her streams to see a visible uptick in gamers.

Later on this year, Tani is going to launch a broadened variation of Sausage Legend: Arena on Steam– basically a more filled-out Sausage Legend 2 story mode with included functions. Servants need to use up arms (sausages) to eliminate for their flexibility in an incredible activity preferred by nobles: the sausage battle. There will be a deckbuilding mechanic to assist you plan the battles a little much better– “the character does not recover itself, however the cards will assist you do that,” Tani states– along with a couple of brand-new modes and relocations.

“We wish to broaden the video game, and we desire [more] individuals to learn about it,” Tani states earnestly, before providing me with a little acrylic standee of a hotdog. Sausage Legend‘s upcoming release on Steam is poised to bring the video game to a broader audience, one that I busily hope will consist of passionate modders. Half of the playerbase is Japanese, while the rest are overseas in the United States and Taiwan, with France being available in 4th. Tani and I are both shocked that Germany isn’t in the leading 5; his preferred sausage type is weisswurst, which appears suitable in the canon of substantial computer game sausages.

After the effective cooperations he’s had– crossovers with the 2016 film Sausage PartyMorinaga Pino ice-cream, and Hololive– I ask if he would think about dealing with Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, maybe even the Olympics of sausages. “If there is an opportunity, we would enjoy to,” he states with a smile. “Just consuming a hotdog is the very best method to consume a sausage.”