Review for The Magnificent Trufflepigs
There's something calming about the world of The Magnificent Trufflepigs. It could be the fact it's based entirely around the rather leisurely hobby of metal detecting, seeing you trudge slowly up and down empty meadows, chatting occasionally to your friend on a walkie-talkie. Or it could be those fields themselves – beautiful snapshots of the English countryside at its finest brought to life, often making you want to pause your scavenger hunt and look up to admire the nature around you. Unfortunately, the developers decided that this wasn't enough, and that every calm needs a storm. And so we're given a story that tries to create drama out of very little, and rather than conjuring up a booming whirlwind of emotion, it ends up simply fizzling out. Much like the brief real-life adventures I’ve had with metal detecting, I was left enjoying my time spent playing this game well enough but ultimately under no pretension that anything I'd discovered was of any huge lasting value.
The premise sees you play as Adam, who's been asked in an out-of-the-blue phone call by an old but for some time distant friend Beth to join her for a few days of metal detecting in the fields of a now-empty farm. Besides wanting to catch up, the real reason she's called is to see if you can help her locate the other half of an earring she found there when she was much younger, which brought her some fleeting fame and a little bit of fortune. The time to act is now, as the farm has just been sold and builders will be moving in soon. Feeling lonely and hoping to rekindle your lost friendship, you’ve agreed to her unusual and unexpected request, and now here you are at the crack of dawn after a brief hello over walkie-talkies (Beth is in another field nearby), ready to start prowling the fields for riches. Or old bottle caps.
You set about with your treasure-hunting instrument, moving via keyboard with WASD (a controller is also supported) and using the mouse or the arrow keys to pan the camera either down to your sweeping detector by your feet or up around you for a look at the glorious countryside. A map is just a keystroke away, which will mark an x wherever you come across any “treasure.”
To find that buried treasure, a bleeping metre pops up at the top of the screen whenever you have your detector equipped. When you get closer to a patch containing metal, the metre turns from green to amber to red, and the bleeps become higher pitched and more frequent. Find the right spot and it's time to press the action key to dig with your shovel (an animation) and then another a few times to use your trowel to dig until you uncover what's been causing all the bleeping. You can then rotate your new find in close-up view with the mouse and take a picture of it with your phone before sending it to Beth.
You'll often chat remotely with Beth after these discoveries. Both characters are voiced, unsurprisingly, by British actors, with Doctor Who's Arthur Darvill in particular lending a quiet, questioning tone to Adam as he tries to delve deeper into what's happened in Beth's life since they last met. The conversations also appear as text on-screen and it's not possible to skip the dialogue if you're a fast reader, which can slow things down a little. Occasionally you get to choose different dialogue options as replies to Beth, but it never felt to me like these decisions ever affected what happened in the story or changed the ending in any way, so any sense of player agency is limited and largely illusory.
You never get to see what Beth or Adam looks like, as when you break for lunch each day (there are five days in total, with each day taking roughly half an hour to play through), the game becomes a bit like a BBC Radio 4 play – the two characters sitting and talking to each other with slightly muffled voices inside a car, whilst the camera pans overhead. The background graphics are truly gorgeous, however, which should come as no surprise with the lead designer of the equally beautiful Everybody's Gone to the Rapture on the team. Sunlight dances across blades of grass, wind turbines spin slowly in the distance, and trees sway in the breeze. Each day you start in a different section of the farm, although it all looks fairly alike, save the odd cloudier afternoon. Light refrains of pianos and other musical instruments play alongside the ambient chirping of birds as you trudge and beep your way across the land. It's a lovely world to visit and spend some time in.
Sadly, the story that grows from these stunning settings just doesn't really go anywhere throughout the two to three hours it takes to finish The Magnificent Trufflepigs. We're lead to believe that something big is going to be uncovered, either physically at the farm, or emotionally in Beth's past – or ideally both. Whilst the game does well to drop some red herrings along the way, the most significant reveal is a big letdown when it comes, made worse by how much the supposed emotional impact of it is hammed up by both characters. It probably doesn't help that despite some strong acting, the characters themselves aren't very likeable. Adam proves to be annoying and very needy, whilst Beth can only talk endlessly about herself. There's not a lot to get invested in, leaving any major dramatic moments evoking less shock and more “so what?” shrugs, and it all culminates in a very abrupt ending.
The disappointing script leaves any excitement to the actual metal detecting, which, whilst fun at first as you uncover all kind of weird trinkets and trash (a hair pin, a coin, an old tractor pedal for me), starts to become a little repetitive as the days go on. There's an option to keep searching for treasure when it’s time for your lunch break or when the day draws to a close instead of ending your pursuit right then. But I never felt the urge to, because it didn’t seem as if any of the things I discovered were hidden in specific spots of the map to find, like a real treasure hunt. Rather, it came across like each discovery was simply timed to happen at a certain point after the last, taking any sense of agency about where I was searching away from me. As with the dialogue and the digging, this too felt like it was “on rails” as opposed to truly giving you any freedom. If the story had been stronger, this would have been a more acceptable way to pass the time in and around conversations, but with cracks showing in both gameplay and narrative, the whole process can end up being as underwhelming as some of Adam's finds.
At its best, The Magnificent Trufflepigs feels similar to Firewatch, transporting you to a relaxing, scenic location to lose yourself in for a few hours, far away from the hustle and bustle of city life. It’s also supported by some great acting between the two unseen protagonists, but here the drama never really amounts to anything and even the ending just doesn't quite hit home. Unlike the abnormally perpetual sunny skies of the game itself, the experience here ends up feeling much more like the weather we Brits often bemoan, tempting players with the odd ray of graphical and conceptual sunshine here and there but ultimately clouding over and dampening any promise with its confusing narrative and unlikeable leads.
