Silly Sausage in Meat Land

Silly Sausage in Meat Land is a puzzle platformer released for iOS and Android on March 25 2015, the Amazon App Store on March 26 2015, and in Unity on Nitrome's website on April 23rd 2015, with a Web GL release to follow soon.

The game was first unveiled on December 27th 2014, with a projected release date of February 2015, which it missed. The game is free and is Nitrome's first multiplatform game that is not endless.

Silly Sausage in Meat Land will be Nitrome's first Web GL game, released as such to improve compatibility among players.

Controls

 * Swipe left/right/up/down (mobile) - move stretchy dog in that direction
 * updownleftright - move stretchy dog in that direction

Gameplay
Silly Sausage in Meat Land puts the player in control of a stretchy dog who can endlessly stretch its body at will. The dog's legs cannot move at all, so it relies on moving around via its stretchy body. If the dog's face goes against a platform it can grip on to, it will grab it and its entire body will retract into that spot. If the dog impacts any hazards it will die and restart at the last registered doghouse.

Unlike the previous Silly Sausage game, Silly Sausage in Meat Land has no individual levels and instead the game takes place in a very large level with fifty doghouses that serve as checkpoints, with gems scattered throughout the level. When a doghouse is registered the player will respawn there, a dog house able to be registered by paying a designated amount of gems or watching a video advertisement.

Release version
This version was released on iOS, Android, and Amazon App Store, labelled as 1.0.1 on iOS and 1.0.3 on the Amazon App Store. Although this version of the game was the initial version released, this version is actually a patch for the original version of the app submitted to all the app stores.

After finding bugs in the original version of the game after it had been submitted, Nitrome submitted a new version (the version that would be the release version) in order to fix these bugs. Although what the app fixes is not specified on the Apple App Store or Amazon App Store, the Google Play store mentions that it fixes glitches with the camera and other bugs.

First Android update version
Labelled as 1.0.5, this update adds a video game controller icon to the menu that links to Google Play games and changes the back button in the pause menu from a rectangle with an arrow pointing to the left to a large arrow curling one hundred and eighty degrees to the left.

Second Android update version
Released on April 8 2015 and labelled 1.0.6, this update fixes some bugs.

Previews

 * December 27 2014 - The game was announced and a screenshot posted.
 * March 5 2015 - A Vine of the game is shared.
 * March 9 2015 - Romain Macré shared a screenshot of the game via Twitter.

Development
Silly Sausage in Meat Land was revealed on December 27th 2014 with a projected release date of February 2015. The game, along with Green Ninja: Year of the Frog and Magic Touch Wizard for Hire was shown at Pocket Gamer Connects, an event which took place on January 13-14 2015. Although Silly Sausage in Meat Land was not able to meet its projected release date of February 2015 Nitrome later updated fans on March 9 2015 that Silly Sausage in Meat Land will be Nitrome's next game, and later on that it would probably be released in March 2015.

The game was finished in March 2015 but due to making a last minute change that Nitrome feared would delay the app's released a week due to submission times to the various app store, they held off announcing it. Fortunately this delay did not happen, allowing Nitrome to announce the game's release date. The game was released on March 25 2015.

Early on during development the game's art was overhauled. The function of the doghouses was based on the Rovio mobile game Retry.

For the music in the game Nitrome considered using the music from the original Silly Sausage flash game but they found this music did not fit with the game and that it causes a lot of buzzing through the speakers on mobile devices. Nitrome later settled with remastering some of the game's old music and also adding some new music to it as well.

Silly Sausage in Meat Land also used ideas from the original Silly Sausage that were cut due to difficulty implementing them, two of these being grid free movement and scrolling levels, both being cut due to being impractical but brought back due to Nitrome's interest in using them. Grid free movement was also worked into Silly Sausage in Meat Land as Nitrome did not like the original Silly Sausage's controls.

Silly Sausage in Meat Land taking place in a long level with multiple checkpoints was a decision that this level was built around, instead of individual levels being made and then attached together.

Reception
Silly Sausage in Meat Land was chosen by Pocket Gamer as the "best Android game this week" the week the game was released and again as one of the top ten iOS games of March 2015

Future content
Nitrome has not denied that they will ever provide new levels for Silly Sausage in Meat Land, but as of April 10 2015 they are unable to work on any more levels due to multiple other projects.

Trivia

 * The name of the blog post announcing the game was originally called "Our Pork Based Pooch - Coming to Mobile!", but the following day (December 28 2014) was changed to "More Pork Based Pooch!".
 * The Silly Sausage logo resembles the colouring of the logo of Fault Line.