The Magnificent Trufflepigs

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Was a fun experience overall! Had a sort of Firewatch vibe to it in that [spoiler]you're nudged in the direction of thinking something dire is going to happen but then it doesn't really[/spoiler], which I liked. Visually, the game is beautiful and it had good reminders in the context of the story that life doesn't follow your plans and that no one has it all figured out. Made me want to go metal detecting, too. :) Some notes that include story/character spoilers below, read at your own risk. x I didn't really like either of the characters by the end is my main issue. They both had good takes here and there about the life stuff mentioned above, but their friendship(?) is pretty toxic, which also made the ending feel bereft of any payoff other than [spoiler]Beth realizing that she needed to take off and leave her Type A lifestyle behind now that it was no longer serving her and was instead harming her with her own unrealistic expectations.[/spoiler]. There was an obvious "friendzoned" Nice Guy expectation from Adam more than a few times that indicated because Beth was back and untethered, that meant they were going to get together after all these years apart and that gave me the ick. But then Beth's closing dialogue basically writing off the week they'd spent talking through her baggage, trying to fulfill one of her goals, and not thanking her "friend" for anything he did to help her also gave me the ick. She also never really checks her privilege when it comes to her family business despite having several opportunities to. It left me in a state of being generally annoyed with both of them by the end and the ending itself didn't really provide any closure on their friendship and how they treated each other, even if it did resolve some of Beth's turmoil (which, to be fair, was ultimately the central point of the story). The only other gripe I have is over completing the achievements. There's a "New Game+" option that shows up after you complete the game that prioritizes the treasures you haven't found yet (love that) to help you get the "found all treasures" achievement, but it still makes you go through the tutorial and all the barely skippable dialogue cutscenes and it's *painful* when you've experienced the story and just want to find the last few items. All in all though, I probably got what I needed in an extra half-hour, so I was just being impatient. The metal detector also doesn't go off near the car, which was the first thing I tested. :') Small, silly thing and not at all groundbreaking as a find, just something I noticed. Ultimately, it's probably good because I'm sure it could be confusing if someone mistook the detection for an item being buried in the road rather than a realistic reaction of a metal detector to a car, but it might've been resolved with a short, jokey dialogue exchange with Beth. All that said! Clearly, I got invested because I've given this all a lot of thought. I enjoyed the game. :) Thank you for the experience, looking forward to the next one.

[h1] Poor Start, saved by the twist [/h1] This game is many things, perhabs to much things at the same time. Some kind of Jack of all Trades and a master of none. It comes with flaw and problems in any form and shape, but surprisingly managed to leave behind a meaningfull lection to be learned by the player. When it comes to other review it seems that one half expierenced an amazing revelation while the other half got turned away missing the twist of the story and therefor the lesson. I wanna write this review a spoilerfree as possible so there is some stuff I cant talk about. I am going to adress some issues that would be part of big spoiler and I am going to vaguely speak about a few things. Please mind that. You are Adam and you are called by Beth an old friend to help and search for an earring on an old soon to be demolished farm. The game takes place across 5 days. Your tools to find the earing are a metaldetector, a shovel and a trovel. At first running arround the really beautifull scenery on this old farm and try finding and digging up mostly metal trash while being on the hunt for the big treasure sounds exiting. Sadly its not. Detecting mostly consist about walking really slow with a big metal detector arround and wait for the game to spawn something in front of you. You heard right. The game doesnt hide stuff arround for you to sweap for. It has an internal timer spawning items everyonce in awhile. A quick test to try this is to not actively search and run arround without detecting. Once you start the detector it goes of imidiatily. While some story items are fixed the game spawns random stuff for you to find. You cannot find everything within the first time you need to replay the game on new game + to find the last and missing items for the final achievement. Just a side note. This choice in gameplay is boring. Active the detector and press your forward button until the game spawn an item then one button for the shovel and 3 to 4 for the trovel till you have your item in your hands. There is no thrill of the hunt about it. Just a waiting game. This mechanic exist for one reason. To advance in time. Each time you pick up an item you take a picture and send to Beth. Depending on the item found you either get small talk on your smartphone or a full blown conversation on the walkie talkie. Each time slowing you down forcing you to listen. Just because this game is about a story. The story of Beth having trouble in her life growing up. The problem I have with this progession method is that is a way to complex system that could have been a simple walking simulutor. Instead I am forced either to the gameplay interrupting the storytelling or the storytelling interrupting the gameplay. The majorty looks like this. You spend a minute sweaping to be interrupted to talk for 3 minutes. Depending on what you enjoy at the beginning the other is interrupting therefor creating an inbalance of gameplay and story. Of course it may be you like both so the problem doesnt apply but i my case I didnt enjoy either. The first two days storywise are painfull to listen. As the player I felt like the third wheel stuck inbetween to friends on a long flight across the globe talking to each other about anything and everything. I had trouble finding anything to bond with either Beth or the character we play Adam. While some background story is dropped pretty early on about Beth. Adam seem to just exist. It give the vibe that Adam is no stranger to the player and we are supposed to know him very well. In reality we dont. We control a shallow shadow of a figure I couldnt care less about. Beth isnt better here. My dislike in her grew and grew early on. She is this type of workaholic that feels entitled and selfish about herself and we played the role of the mechanic fixing her after some stuff went wrong. Adam gets treated like ♥♥♥♥ by Beth. So I felt stuck inbetween boring conversations and boring gameplay. But I went on torward the end. The later half of the game got better for me. Obviously only the story started to get more serious and the greater picture gets more and more shown. The highlight are two twist the story has. One being kinda obivous and figurable pretty early on and the other is the one a lot of players miss. I liked the last twist. It made a lot more sense and gave away a great lection a lot of people should learn in life. However the first half ruined the game for me and the later could save it entirly. It just made the time not feeling like wasted fully. More or less like a little reward earned at the end. The story itself is more suitable for young adults struggling with the shift from being young to getting older. Specifficly arround the age of thirty. Its about dreams and purpose and understanding the meaing of life. Itself that would be a nice story listen to and with Darvill voicing adam I got one of my favorite Doctor Who companions Rory Williams talking. Which is really nice. However the game misses of balancing the story. One big mistake is not proper introducing the characters. A similar game, Firewatch, which is build almost the same way. A game hiding a story based walking sim within some gamplay, in this case exploration and observation. Firewatch has an introduction build arround giving us a brief choice of action while exploring the past years of the main character. He starts with broken feelings and we understand why and can feel themself. Trufflepigs doesnt do this. Adam exist without anything in background at the beginning. The only thing we know about him that nobody except Beth likes him. Which as part of the biggest reveal remains a mystery for the long time. The game tries to gain sympathy for Beth but fails to give a proper picture and paints only the bad things about her. The wonderfull Emily is away is game about to characters having conversations every once in awhile over a messager. Its only pressing one button for the text to appear and sometime making a choice but it does this whole social drama better. It has the same nonesense and meaningfull stuff at the same time. Eventhough Emily is away has a more romantical plot while this game is not a romance. It may come of here and there but trust me the twist shows my some stuff seemed like this. For me the game has a good idea making the wrong design and writing choices. Leaving it in the vast ocean of mediocre titles rarely remember in the future. I fait I wish no game.

I wish I could find a nuke.

One of the most boring games I have ever played. There isn't really a story, just a girl that keeps yapping about her disfunctional relationship. after the first day I turned the volume down to 0 and started watching youtube instead of actually paying attention because I was so uninterested.

"I wanna play Firewatch!" "We have Firewatch at home!"

Quite obviously, this game must have started off from one simple idea - metal detecting, but an idea is definitely not enough to make a game good. This game turned out to be an example of a seemingly interesting concept that went terribly wrong. What a missed opportunity. It can be somehow felt that this game was trying to learn from or imitate some of the more successful “walking simulator” games, such as [i]Firewatch[/i] or [i]Dear Esther[/i]. It has a beautiful landscape, an explicit narrative, a couple of playful gadgets or Easter eggs. However, unlike other games which take players on a journey, in this game, you, well, just detect metal and find literally piles of junk. Maybe the game could give a backstory to every “crap” found to develop further on its narrative? IDK. To be honest, metal detecting IS a unique idea that has not been done often enough, and we can see the possibility of developing it into an enjoyable game mechanic or using it as an interesting story telling tool. However, this game dedicated the majority of its effort to a bland, predictable and shallow story; and the characters are under-developed and not even half likable. This is such a huge let-down that with or without the metal detecting element, the game feels boring and uninteresting.

The Magnificent Trufflepigs is a narrative walking game about nostalgia and the healing power of wide open spaces. Compared to Firewatch when it released in 2021, I found The Magnificent Trufflepigs to be something similar, yet different: somehow an interesting take on the walking sim and a game of a very distinct time. I found something important in Stanning, England and I think you might as well.

Meh! it is so boring. I just wanted to find some treasures instead I got some stupid story. Like in the whole game you are just looking around for 30 minutes and then you are waiting the characters to talk there is no skip option. Both characters are also sucked. Idk maybe it's not for me. If you are looking to find some treasures then this is not for you

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