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This game caught my eye and I decided to buy it on the first day despite no reviews being available. I will say that my first impression is positive. I did not notice any obvious bugs or flaws. The gameplay struck me as repetitive, but not boring. It has the potential to be addictive. The game proved to be a relaxing and enjoyable way to spend a night. It does not seem overpriced, but remember to be wary of any early-access title.

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The core gameplay focuses on learning how to properly manage a team of dogs, and how to maximize race efficiency. Races use simple click and timing mechanics to manage factors such as sled position, hunger, jumping, and untangling. Proper racing is rewarded with speed and happy dogs. Awesome moments are rewarded with fame that can lead to sponsorship upgrades.

Learning about each individual dog is important to team management. Each dog has a unique personality that will affect their natural sled position, likes, dislikes, happiness, and rapport with teammates. Dogs will have their own favorite things, skills, and faults. They will also have different levels of athleticism that will affect their fatigue and hunger.

All of the information about races and dogs will serve one purpose: managing the team. The overall goal is to earn money from victories and move on to more advanced leagues. The time outside of races is used to rest dogs to lower fatigue, fill the journal, change leagues, and hire new dogs. Raleigh will offer a piece of advice (chosen by you) at the end of each race. This information will be used to fill the journal and provide gameplay tips. The first couple of leagues seem easy once the core gameplay is understood, but that seems subject to change based on in-game progress and future updates.

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I’m sure there’s plenty more to the game that I have not discovered yet, but these are my first impressions. I have no reason to dislike this game, and I would recommend it to anyone who finds the above information to be to their liking.

Since the game is now released and a lot more people are going to look at it, I'm going to write a review for it.
Dog Sled Saga is, like the name already says a game about dog sledding and Team management. You start out with just a couple dogs as an unknown Team in a low league.

From there you can train your dogs, manage your kennel, hire staff, hire other dogs, run races.

How do the Races work?
The Races are next to the management the most important Part of the game. They are what gives you your money that you need to do everything.

The races play well, and are controlled over clicking, dragging and so on. Sometimes the races can get a little too much, especially in the highest league, but since you're on a high level and it already is quite forgiving with your mistakes, it just makes sense that sometimes you'd struggle.

The game looks very beautiful, has lots of tiny and lovely detail in it, a small story and devs that care about their game.

If you like Team management, Dog Sledding, Caretaking or small little games that don't ask you for much than you want than this is definitely worth it's price.

If you're looking for a high indepth breeding simulator or something of that kind, you're wrong here.

I backed this on kickstarter quite some time ago, and I've been pleased with the way the game has been progressing.
It's a ridiculously fun game to while away a bit of time.

Priced perfectly, great art, and I love the music. Dogs have enough variety in characteristics to give them some personality and make them memorable. Racing could use a bit more challenge and/or variety, but overall it's an enjoyable game.

I have a dog on my team that sometimes goes into binge eating mode, and another that sometimes speed boosts with extra biscuits. So my races sometimes turn into a biscuit machine gun simulator! All the biscuits in the air all the time! Damn good thing my sponsor is a biscuit bag company.

10/10 would make it rain biscuits again.

For those wondering, this game is 1 part management sim, 1 part click-timing puzzles (during races), and 1 part building inexplicable bonds with pixel dogs. It has a little story to it also which is a bonus.

Fun game, although a little repetitive at times. With how communicative the devs were throughout early access I'm certain we'll see good support.

Very simple, but very fun. I'd pay $10 for it easily and I consider myself cheap. It's quite relaxing. The music is really catchy and it's a very cute little game. Definitely worth the price in its current state. I haven't found any bugs myself, but I should say I'm not terribly far into it yet. Still, nowadays that's pretty good for an EA title...

Really excited to see how this game progresses. So far, I am really enjoying it. The mechanics feel simple but really rewarding - improving your timing feels really skillful and the multi-tasking involved in each race is challenging without being stressful. Love the aesthetic and the music is spot on. Game is lovely, more than worthy of your money.

Very fun, addictive game. Binge bought this and couldn't stop playing for 5 hours straight.
The only abnormality I've come across by now is that my entire team has gone through the process of mitosis. I've got perfect clones of most of my dogs, which is the opposite of a problem, though.

This game is a lot of fun.

I picked it up this morning and wanted to try it out for an hour or so and ended up spending 5 hours straight.

Pros:
-really nice visual design
-enjoyable and slightly challenging gameplay
-my sensitive girlfriend can watch because no dogs die (I think)

Cons:
-can get a little too easy at times
-minimal story

Dog Sled Saga is a terrier-ific game that although may be a tad unengaging at times, keeps you on your feet during some tricky stages later on in the game.

Story:
You are a rookie dog sled racer learning the basics, building your team, figuring out the individually special traits of your dogs, and once you hit the snow, the race is on. You develop a rival who you come to race time and time again througout the game, and the races do get close at the end. There is a tale told to you about how the dog sled racing scene came to be, but I'm convinced that it's not 100% accurate.

There's not much to the story other than the fact that you are trying to enter higher leagues and become famous while beating your rival.

Races:
You pick your lineup, which dogs go where (Wheel, Middle, Lead). Your dogs will have different capabilities on what breed they are and how you train them. Throughout the course, your dogs get exhausted, keep feeding them by lobbing food into the air at the perfect angle for them to snatch and gobble up. Don't worry if you run out, there are reload bags all along the tracks. There are some obstacles like trees that will block your throws and rocks that will require you and your dogs to leap over. Each race has different statistics such as: different team sizes, differing track lengths, amount of food reloads, amount of obstacles, and ground snow, wind, and weather quality. At the end of the races, the participating dogs may receive some popularity, experience, and stamina depending on how the race went, but for sure they will receive a certain amount of fatigue from the race.

Feed your dogs to keep their energy up while avoiding obstacles, don't throw food at them when they don't want it or you'll bop 'em on their heads.

Resting:
When you and your dogs aren't racing, you can let them rest, you can train them, and you can pet them! This is where you can let your dogs recover from fatigue, or where you can train them and boost their levels. Later in the game you have options to hire employees; caretakers or trainers who provide additional slots and capability of training some dogs while allowing others to rest during the regimen process that moves you a day closer to the next race.

Hire new dogs, say goodbye to old ones, do some training, pay your dues, get sponsorships, it's all part of your day to day life as dog sled racer.

Visuals:
The pixel art convinced me to buy this game, the husky on the cover to be specific. The pixel dogs are adorable and the frame-by-frame animations are so smooth.

There's so much detail put into the art and it all comes together and is executed perfectly.

TL;DR:
A fun game that is a great buy, it may fall short to some in racing engagement and story, but it's addictive and outstanding in visuals and experience (roughly 5 hours gameplay time to reach the final league). I would recommend buying on a bigger sale (-30%+) even though I bought it at -10%. Absolutely worth it if you love dogs.