Feed the Hungry Aussie Critters in Sausage Sizzle

Join a cast of hungry, adorable critters as they attempt to sneakily swipe some delicious, sizzling meat from the backyard barbie. Can you outwit the humans and fill their bellies?

Sausage Sizzle is a light dice game from 25th Century Games. It’s designed for 2-5 players and has a 15-minute game time.

Gameplay

Each player takes a set of six animal tokens, each one representing one of the six animals in the game. There are eight total dice: four are animal dice and four are number dice.

On your turn, you roll all the dice. You must then choose to lock in at least one die and reroll any not yet locked in. You continue to do this until all dice have been locked in. You then choose one of your animals to score, flipping over its token to show that it may not be scored again. Your score for the round is the number of animal dice showing that animal multiplied by the lowest number you rolled on one of the number dice. For example, let's say you rolled three kangaroos and one quokka, and the lowest number on your number dice is three. If you choose to score the kangaroos, you would earn nine points, while if you scored the quokka instead, it would earn you three.

The number dice cannot roll a six. Two of them have two fives, and two of them show two sausages. A sausage counts as one, unless you manage to roll all four sausages, in which case they would score as a seven.

Players each take turns until they have scored all six of their animals and then the game ends and the player with the most points wins.

Review

Sausage Sizzle is a light, push-your-luck dice game. It’s got a fun theme and we liked the Australian animals. It does play well, has simple choices that are easy to teach, doesn’t overstay its welcome, and is a fun game to play while you chat and hang out with friends.

It’s not the most creative game, however, and we did wish there’d been a little more going on. Perhaps if the different animals each scored in unique ways, the choice you make over which one to score when would have felt more meaningful. However, the ability to risk a push for a full sausage set is a fun, tempting addition to the rules.

The artwork is fun and colorful, and we can see families enjoying it for that reason. It looks nice out on the table. It’s also a pretty compact game so it’s a good game for travel.

Sausage Sizzle didn’t wow us, as there are a lot of similar games out there. But it is a nicely produced one and was certainly enjoyable to play, so it’s worth visiting if you don’t already have something along the same lines in your collection.

Pros: Fun Australian animals, pleasant artwork, very accessible

Cons: Feels like it’s missing something to set it apart

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.