The Magnificent Trufflepigs Review
Release Date: June 3rd, 2021
Developer: AMC Games, Thunkd
Platforms: PC (Reviewed), Nintendo Switch (TBA - Summer 2021)
Price: $11.99
One of the reasons why I always keep coming back to walking simulators is not only because of the unique storytelling that typically associates with them, but the fact that even with limitations and its casual nature they still find ways to provide a unique experience with a look, tone, and sometimes enough gameplay tweaks to make them memorable and standout from other genres, causing so many titles within the walking simulator genre to be one-of-a-kind and instead of competing, complementing each other with something for just about everyone. The Magnificent Trufflepigs continues this trend by delving into the genre with a metal detector in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other, putting the player in the shoes of Adam who returns to an old town he grew up in to help a lady named Beth unearth treasures spread throughout the English countryside, uncovering not only items buried beneath, but the memories that may or may not be associated with them. Magnificent Trufflepigs immediately caught my attention for a few reasons, mainly the fact that I haven't seen a game focus on a metal detector for its gameplay, but also the beautiful scenery that comes with the game as you explore, scavenge, and uncover, but ultimately what I found was a boring, tedious, and uninspired time better left off buried.
There are a lot of oddities in why The Magnificent Trufflepigs didn't work out, because it seemed to have all the right ingredients to provide a really neat new walking sim: It had the lead designer of the critically-acclaimed Everybody's Gone to the Rapture on board, was backed by AMC Games, and had the BAFTA-nominated composer, Kevin Penkin, of other notable indie titles like Necrobarista and Florence. With so many creative minds from a newly-formed studio that effectively in a genre like this has free-reign to be as ambitious and creative as they want, it’s a wonder why things simply didn't come together, as from the get-go you can see once The Magnificent Trufflepigs is booted up that presentation was one of the last things that was thought of in development. The main menu is a standard translucent black box with your typical New Game, Options, and Quit options with little else to accompany it, and a bland logo sits on top of an otherwise pretty background where players will walk around and unearth items in a conflicting and clashing sight for the eyes. Once the game begins, things tend to get better as you're greeted to a cutscene with an overview of the English countryside as a car remains idle during a phone call, but these segments last way too long for their own good, and it quite literally at one point put me to sleep as Adam and Beth discussed catching up and looking for "treasure" as he revisits a childhood home. After this you'll find yourself with a small tutorial as there's not much in the way of controls, and then you're basically off to repeat a sequence of days in which you'll use the metal detector to find as many items as you can. As far as I can tell, it seemed like there's only a certain amount of items you need to collect from day to day and enough to get the dialogue moving, though items seemed to be spread out everywhere and can be found any which way in any order. So long as you meet that hidden requirement, you'll be able to keep moving forward and watch as the map expands into new areas of the English countryside for you to travel to and excavate.
The areas never really feel or look that big (though the draw distance certainly gives off a sense of a grand landscape ahead), but it always comes down to the walking that simply makes everything feel like a drag followed by the incessant dialogue interactions that feel oddly recorded whether they're meant to be outdoors or indoors. When they're indoors especially, the voices sound like they've been put through a vocoder and the occasional high-speed fan you would speak through as a kid for a chopped alien-esque effect, and even over the walkie-talkies and phones they did not sound much better or different for that matter. It's an odd effect that when I began the game I didn't really have a good idea of where the voices were coming from even with a visual on the environments, as models representing any and all characters involved are virtually nonexistent. The occasional text will be sent as you screenshot every item you find with your trusty shovel and trowel as well, and I also couldn't help but wonder why there were so many different forms of communication happening in the game other than it was meant to be more of an asset-pleaser where it didn't become mundane to look at the same items over and over again, but lo and behold this was the case regardless. It's evident that The Magnificent Trufflepigs tries to follow-up with a Firewatch design and philosophy, but simply misses the mark tenfold with a cast that doesn’t have a good enough dynamic, and the little drama there is doesn't hold enough weight to be deemed captivating enough for its narrative to follow-through with any real merit by journey's end.
Optimization also is questionable, as running on either a GTX 1050Ti or RTX 2080 on both my laptop and desktop respectively saw performance woes that involved stutters and slowdown that already dragged a naturally sedated game. The Magnificent Trufflepigs' Steam page recommends having a minimum of a GTX 970, but no matter what on both of my hardware that had 16GB of RAM included (the recommended; 8GB minimum) it still seemed to trip over itself, despite the game automatically adjusting settings and putting everything on max as it was deemed my hardware could perform optimally (which I know it can). While The Magnificent Trufflepigs is undoubtedly vibrant, however, there's a bit of a false sense of beauty with screenshots that have been provided for this game, as once you're in-game and seeing things in motion, you begin to notice the aesthetic is a lot more flat and mute than what you're initially led to believe – all this while still needing upwards of 6-8GB to install for a game that 1. doesn't last long, and 2. despite labelling itself as open world, finds itself in a very strict sandbox with little to see or do outside of collecting junk. Animations leave a lot to be desired and the only real redeeming part of it all is that at least the draw distance is decent enough to appreciate the valleys, structures, and air balloons that accent the sky.
In the short amount of time you'll spend with The Magnificent Trufflepigs, it'll unfortunately feel like a chore going around in a fairly open area walking infuriatingly slow with no sprint button in sight as you uncover lost treasures and various memorabilia communicating over a walkie-talkie as you come to a complete standstill after every discussion being held. The constant stop-go approach just makes the entire experience feel like a bumpy ride in inconsistent traffic, and it would be a lot more palatable if you could simply move while talking instead of being forced to stand still waiting for an otherwise uninspired story and dialogue to finish up before being able to move again, however once you've done this, you then have to pick your metal detector back up because for some reason it's dropped on the ground once you get on the walkie-talkie. It's just an overall frustrating time with odd quirks that occur when a walking simulator is typically known for being a casual yet calming time with little to no death or game overs to worry about, and instead we find ourselves on a slow trek uncovering materials in a poorly presented format.
PROS:
Beautiful English scenery with a lively sky as well as nice valleys and greenery.
CONS:
Interface and presentation is incredibly basic
The voice acting and audio quality feels uninspired and low quality
Movement speed is much slower than a typical walking simulator, which is a problem given its bigger than normal areas to walk around and uncover items in.
It's evident there was a Firewatch approach to its design but missed the mark tenfold
Thank you to AMC Games for providing us a copy of
The Magnificent Trufflepigs for the purposes of this review