The Magnificent Trufflepigs
PC, Switch
Blue skies, green fields, bright morning sunshine, countryside sights and sounds, and the promise of buried treasure. We could get used to this. The Magnificent Trufflepigs offers the most blissful vision of rural Britain since Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture– which is no great surprise since it’s been designed by The Chinese Room alumnus Andrew Crawshaw. As in Yaughton, you won’t see anybody, but you will hear them: the story unfolds over a series of conversations conducted via walkie-talkie. Beth has called upon her friend Adam to help her locate an earring (matching one she discovered in her youth that earned her a modicum of local fame) before the farmland they’re digging up is sold. You slowly sweep your metal detector over the fields, covering as much ground as you can while taking in the bucolic views – with the promise of sandwiches, Jaffa Cakes and a good old catch-up in Beth’s car when you break for lunch.
It’s a simple job: you walk around at a leisurely pace, listening for more insistent beeps from your detector. Then you follow a meter at the top of the screen until the centre turns red, letting you know you’ve found something. You stop automatically, bringing out your shovel to drive into the ground, before using your
Developer Thunkd Publisher AMC Games Format PC (tested), Switch Release Out now
trowel to uncover the object from the clump of mud. Take a snap of your find and more often than not Beth will have an anecdote to tell about it. But she’ll interrupt at other times, too, and before long it’s clear she’s in need of the company. Mudalot, her family’s outdoor equipment firm, might be a success, but the nature-loving Beth doesn’t seem suited to a desk job. And her fiancé Jake is away “with his boring rugby mates”, but then this isn’t the first time he’s left her behind. So is she really looking for this earring, or is there another motive for her hunt? Meanwhile, Adam’s own identity is left ambiguous: is he an old flame, or something more? And why are her other friends worried about Beth inviting him to help?
Luci Fish’s Beth is easy to warm to, her natural ebullience masking anxieties that are nagging away at her. In that light, Arthur Darvill’s Adam often feels more hindrance than help: when he’s not hinting at becoming more than just friends, he’s offering advice that comes across as deeply patronising. Slowly, we become more distrustful of the character we’re playing, and while the payoff goes some way to explaining why, it raises a series of inconsistencies that make less sense the more you consider them. Still, if the answers are less intriguing than the questions, a couple of hours of straightforward but satisfying work with these views might just make a trufflepig of you yet.