Sauna Rush

Sauna Rush is a homebrew game for the Nintendo 64 by Flávio Zavan released on 13 December 2024. In it, you play as one of four nude sauna patrons who have to avoid overheating and then win a swimming race.

You can get the ROM from its download page by using the password minigamemadness and the source can be found here. Note that this is the same ROM that includes all the other minigames released for the 2024 N64brew Game Jam competition.

About Sauna Rush

A relaxing winter day turns into a competition

Sauna Rush takes place in an isolated cabin in the Finnish countryside where four men walk into the sauna and sit down for a relaxing time. However, there is a fifth man putting water on the hot rocks (löyly) to create steam to make the room feel hotter. This is a bit too much for the other four to bear, so they have to keep bowing forward to avoid passing out.

After about a minute of avoiding steam, the surviving players make their way outside for a nice fresh swim in icy water. Now the game switches to another mode where you have to make your way through quicktime events in order to swim to the other side of a lake. It uses all the buttons on the controller, so you have to be nimble to make your way through.

At the end of the match, the first player to make their way to the finish line is declared the winner and does a little happy dance.

Credits

the game was made by Flávio Zavan as a solo developer.

Review and conclusion

The first time I played Sauna Rush, I couldn’t stop laughing until it was over. The lanky models, the nudity, the cheesy synthesizer playing Säkkijärven Polkka… It’s over-the-top rediculous and I love it. Theming and graphics get a 10/10.

For as well done the presentation is, the gameplay is a lot simpler. It’s not bad per se, it just lacks depth. There is some strategy in the sauna part where you want to get as close to overheating without passing out, but the lake stage is just a reaction speed test. One thing I found very confusing was that in the lake stage you have to press both the C-buttons and D-pad so in my head I think “press up” and end up pressing the wrong “up”, but maybe that’s just a “me” problem.

If you could do something to interact with the other players, that would make the game much more enjoyable. Maybe even having a ‘preview’ of the next button in the lake section.

What a lot of people (myself included) found confusing about Sauna Rush was that in the sauna there is no incentive to not duck. Staying up only makes your heat increase so it’s better to just stay down. What I didn’t realise until I looked into the code is that your heat decreases in the lake stage and if your heat is above zero (you can tell by the sparkly steam effect) each ‘swim’ action grants you a 50% boost id distance. This was originally mentioned in the game’s menu instructions, but it was cropped off for being too long.

const MinigameDef minigame_def = {
  .gamename = "Sauna Rush",
  .developername = "Flávio Zavan",
  .description = "A relaxing winter day turns into a competition",
  .instructions = "Inside: Hold Z to duck and avoid the heat from the steam. "
    "Don't pass out!\nOutside: Press the buttons indicated on the screen. "
    "The heat from the sauna gives you a speed boost",
};

Overall, Sauna Rush does fit perfectly into the minigame aesthetic in that it has a simple pick up and play feeling to it without being too pretentious, even though I think a little bit more explanation or some extra complexity could have served the gameplay a bit more justice. And it’s hilarious, which is always great.