I really enjoyed Stephen's Sausage Roll, although I eventually got completely stuck and was unable to finish it. Last year at some point, I was sifting through Stephen's twitter (dev of Stephen's Sausage Roll) and he mentioned Drod as both an inspiration and as his favourite puzzle game of all time. I noticed that these Drod games were on Steam for a couple bucks, so I bought them and dived right in.

Firstly, let's be completely honest: Drod isn't the most attractive game. In fact, it looks like some kind of Windows 95 shovelware. But appearances can be deceiving: this is one of the most enjoyable and addictive puzzle games I've ever played. And I'm not the only one, have a look at the steam store page reviews and you'll notice that almost everyone has invested 100 if not 400 hours into this game.

The mechanics of the game are quite simple. It's similar to a tile-based rogue-like. You move your character around with the numpad, and your character has a sword, which you can rotate. Each movement (in the 8 cardinal directions) or swing of the sword takes a turn, and the game is turn-based. The game is divided into dungeons, and each dungeon is divided into rooms; the objective of each room is to kill all the enemies. That's the basic idea of the game, but different enemies and game mechanics are piled on rapidly, leading to some of the most ingenious and head-scratching puzzles I've ever encountered. Once you get used to one concept, the game introduces a new concept, and these are layered on top of each other, to allow the player to slowly build up to the most complex puzzles.

I think the reason this game is so enjoyable is that you rarely feel completely stuck, which is a problem I've found in many other puzzle games. Instead, the game mechanics and puzzles in Drod are slightly loose, which allows for many possible solutions, some more optimal than others (like Zachtronics games). The game is also very charming because it has a fascinating story, with full awkward low budget voice acting. It's a strange mixture of genres: the gameplay is all puzzles, and yet you're exploring this world, uncovering lore, meeting characters. It's brilliant, and there's nothing else like it. It also has a superb soundtrack, performed on analogue synthesizers by a group called "Travelogue".

There are many entries in the Drod series of games, literally hundreds if not thousands of hours of content; the devs have been adding to this project since 1996. I've plumbed the depths, and I would say that Drod: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder is probably the most-refined entry in the series, and the best starting point (though it's technically the 4th game). If you like puzzle games, you should really consider checking this out, seems like it's a forgotten gem.