The Magnificent Trufflepigs Review
The Magnificent Trufflepigs occasionally turns up treasure, but it’s as shallow as the hundreds of little holes it asks you to dig.
In this debut game from Thunkd, you’re Adam, a British fella returning to Stanning, the quiet, rural town where he grew up in. You’ve come at the request of Beth, an old friend who works for her family’s business, Mudalot, maker of fine outdoor equipment and top employer in town. Beth is going through it. She’s gainfully employed, but having issues at work; engaged, but having issues in her relationship. To turn things around, she invites Adam to join her for a week of metal detecting on an expansive farm on the outskirts of town. She’s hoping to find the match to an earring she discovered at the farm as a child. The find got her a hefty payout and a story on the frontpage of the local paper and Beth is hoping to recapture some of that happiness.
Adam’s never been metal detecting before but no fear, The Magnificent Trufflepigs makes that extremely easy to pick up. Each day you’re confined to one small area of the farm, where you’ll wander around waiting for the telltale beep of nearby deposits. When your indicator turns green, it’s time to pull out your shovel and press a button to dig. Then, you press another button to use your trowel to do some additional, equally simple digging. This is the extent of The Magnificent Trufflepigs’ mechanics.
Hunting for metal
The story does, somewhat, make up for the painfully simple gameplay. After each find, Adam will pull out his phone and text Beth a picture with a quippy caption. If the object is significant in some way—say, a bangle that a neighbor was looking for—Beth will call over using the walkie-talkies the pair carry. These moments build out the relationship between the two, and deliver some bits of pretty good characterisation. But the constant starts and stops give the game an abortive, stilted rhythm. You’re messaging or calling Beth after each find, which means you never have much time to just focus on metal detecting. It feels a little like if Doom Eternal forced you to read each bit of lore as soon as you picked it up. Even though I was genuinely interested in Adam and Beth’s conversations, the game doesn’t deliver this dialogue at a pace that feels natural or satisfying.
As a result, the daily lunches during which Adam and Beth can just sit down and talk are a welcome bit of uninterrupted chat. But these moments are a reminder of the game’s strict limitations. You never see either character at any point, and during lunch, the camera just rotates slowly around Beth’s car. The voice acting between the two is engaging throughout, but in most other ways, The Magnificent Trufflepigs struggles within its constraints.
I’m a big fan of “walking simulators,” but The Magnificent Trufflepigs hems in its exploration and storytelling so severely that I never felt like I was walking much at all. This is more a “get interrupted constantly” simulator: not a vein I’m particularly eager for developers to mine.