So I played The Magnificent Trufflepigs and I wasn’t sure what to expect from it when I saw published by AMC. The same group responsible for giving us The Walking Dead television series and when I saw the voice cast, I became very interested because it’s Arthur Darvill best known for his role on Doctor Who as Rory Williams, and Luci Fish for her role in Max Payne Retribution.
What I got, however, was an experience because it is a truly relatable story that many people including myself have to deal with, and live through. But let’s backtrack first, shall we?
The Magnificent Trufflepigs is a story game but its gameplay is where the action takes place and it’s what triggers the story. You go around helping your friend Beth trying to find an earring that she once found on a farm as a child. Since the farm is going to be demolished soon because they’re putting in new Wind Mills and Solar Panels to make the little rural village in England they live in more eco-friendly.
Beth realizes she can’t count on any of her old girlfriends to help, as they are all busy with life, and decides she has to call Adam, the character you play. As the story begins you are tasked with helping Beth find the second earring that might be lost on this farm somewhere to help reclaim that joy she had as a child, so you’re given a metal detector to help her find it.
The whole gameplay focuses on finding little treasures scattered across the farm buried in the soil and as you find more items. Beth slowly begins to open up and the story begins to unfold into what I can truly only describe as an experience.
It’s a game that makes you think about life, how you decide to live your life, and what to do with the time we all have left. It makes you think about what’s important to you and what you want to accomplish in the short time any of us have on this planet.
The Magnificent Trufflepigs is a truly unique approach to storytelling, with two wonderfully unique characters that play so well off of each other. Their social interactions feel as if there is a truly loving friendship there whereas in most games or even stories character interactions are never as fluid as they are in The Magnificent Trufflepigs.
But their interactions every time you find something new, how they engage feels so real and that reality helps make the game truly unique. Because it makes us feel more involved, more attached to the story, and to the characters where it makes us feel like we’re actually experiencing their problems, to the point where we want to stop and think about what they’re saying.
The Magnificent Trufflepigs is a short game, I will say that, and I finished it in roughly two hours but that was two hours well spent. It was slow going at the beginning of the game and it wasn’t until the third day of the game that it truly started to take shape into what the game was truly about.
It does have a fair amount of repeatability mind you, since you are digging for treasure you might not be able to get it all in a single run. So they let you replay past days so you can complete your collection and become a Magnificent Trufflepig yourself!
But that is all I want to say, with the gameplay around the two-hour mark I don’t want to spoil anything and if I talk more about it I feel I would give the narrative away. But trust me when I say, I highly recommend The Magnificent Trufflepigs.
An autistic gamer with opinions on games who also enjoys making dumb videos on the internet!