We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.
I was recently reminded of one of my favorite works of interactive fiction, the text adventure Lost Pig (And Place Under Ground), which can be played here.
It’s a comedy game where you play Grunk the Orc, a good-natured green person who works at a farm, but unfortunately let the pig out, and he’ll lose his job if he doesn’t bring it back. This rather minor quest is complicated by the fact that the pig isn’t so easily caught, and both Grunk and the pig fall into a small set of underground rooms at the start. The chambers are the home of a friendly gnome, who at the time was recognized as one of the most conversational characters in all of IF, capable of talking about dozens of topics. The game even has an optional feature that suggests things you can talk to the gnome about!
But the highlight of Lost Pig is Grunk himself, who talk caveman speak like this, no article and refer self in third person. As Grunk describe himself: Grunk orc. Big and green and wearing pants. You can have Grunk take his pants off, to the embarrassment of everyone but Grunk (that includes the pig). Grunk may seem a bit stupid at first, but Grunk’s smarter than he sounds. Unfortunately, your formidable adversary, the pig, is pretty smart too.
A lot of IF can be a bit imposing. Difficult puzzles! Lots of ways to die! Saving often! Long play times! While the puzzles in Lost Pig are challenging, there’s not many ways to actually lose (unless you do some obviously bad things, like burning down the forest at the start). You don’t have to worry about making the game unsolvable, which frees up brain space to focus on solving puzzles. It is a very pleasant little game that won multiple awards at XYZZY 2007. As it turns out, the game is a sequel to Grunk’s LiveJournal, which tells about his previous adventures in the army. (2002-2007)
Since its release in 2007, Lost Pig has had bunches of people on the web talking about it. Some of these: Wikipedia – ifwiki.org – intfiction.org – VideoGameGeek – Gaming After 40 – Teaching and Learning with Interactive Fiction – tvtropes (really!) – and its creator’s own page about the game.
Lost Pig (And Place Under Ground), by Admiral Jota, playable at pr-if.org.
