Lost Pig

This was the first parser game I played (beyond entering some commands into Adventure and Zork ages ago), which means I suffered from some parser-related beginner mistakes that delayed my progress quite a bit (and required walkthrough lookups[1]). I have since come to understand these conventions and doubt I would get stuck the same way.

My playing time estimation is very approximate because I switched between three devices as I played the game, retracing my steps on each. This is possible thanks to the small size of the game. That said, calling it small is a little unfair, because it is incredibly responsive. Almost every action has an interesting reaction, if not effect. This was both a blessing and a curse for a new player; it made exploration satisfying even when I was stuck, but it also made it a little difficult to know when I was barking up the wrong tree. The scoring system to telegraph progress was nice for that purpose.

The puzzles were (not counting parser game beginner gaffes) absolutely solvable and logical. Some puzzles were solvable in parallel, which confused me as a beginner but again, that probably says more about me.

The only thing I wasn't thrilled about was the narrative, which I found to be a little on the shallow end. The game introduces a setting with a backstory, but it is only used as a set for the puzzles.

[1]: I didn't think to examine things as thoroughly as I should have, it took some time until I figured out how to use a thing with another thing, and I didn't think that if (Spoiler - click to show)something has a barely interesting effect, doing more of that thing might have a more interesting effect! (spoiler only in the sense that it explicates a parser IF convention that is a puzzle solution in Lost Pig.)

Kat Zhang and I discuss Lost Pig at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHqZOk4U_tk#t=20s

I'm revisiting games I played so long ago that I don't remember details, but were so good that I remember the impression they left.

I remember laughing all the way through Lost Pig. Proper, loud laughing. And I remember the puzzles being so good that I enjoyed them. I usually hate IF puzzles so much that I joked to another author I might fund a prize for puzzle-less IF.

This game's a joy.

I remember being new to text adventures and playing this after painfully crawling through the Dreamhold, and it was a well-needed break that really got me pumped for finding future text adventures. I often need breaks, and during those I enjoy more light-hearted stories like this one! It was funny and simple to get through. I adored the characters and the dialogue between them. Grunk was the love of my life and probably still is. I would read a fully fledged novel on these characters.

I really should replay this soon.

This made me laugh. I couldn’t do without the hints (had to get help from external hints to exit as well), but the puzzles were great and made sense. I liked how one could just go to a room without re/navigating using directions. This is such a cute game. I even tried putting pants on Pig and also giving pants to Gnome when I was stuck XD Great theme, great storyline. Would replay this just to explore the funny interactions between Grunk and Pig!

Yeah this was fun, I was a little rusty, and got stuck, eventually needing a peek at the walkthrough, but just a peek.

I enjoyed this game, got loads of humour and I liked being an Orc for a few hours. The clues and puzzles are solid and pretty easy, and conversations with the Gnome were hilarious.

Great place to kick off you career in IF!

Lost Pig is possibly the most beloved text adventure around. Grunk is possibly the most endearing protagonist in interactive fiction. The game is perfect for beginners, but still enjoyable to experienced players. Lost Pig is short, fun, humorous, unpretentious, and relatively easy to solve without being too obvious. What are you waiting for? Play it!

I am playing the top rated adventures.
When I started to play this game I thought this was a poor one, but afterwards I enjoyed it a lot.

This game is full of details so it is a simulacionist one. You can try any action you think about.
The map is a cave that you can explore it by yourself. You should EXAMINE exhaustively all names in description so there are objets hidden, more or less.

The puzzles are nicely, coloured and logical. There are several ways to reach some actions.

In the heart of the game there are two NPCs, a pig and a gnome:

Taking the pig is the first task but also is untakeable as a fish. You find the pig rather soon, but you aren't able to catch up it untill later. The pig has its own life and seems that it want to do things in its own exploring all things while standing around you. Also the pig has responses to your actions.

The gnome has a personality, patience, acid humor, resignation, that fits perfectly with Grunk's simpler point of view about life. There are many, many things you can ask the gnome, most of which enrich and has no effect on the game, but several ones are major clues. You have to read carefully. There is fun talking about these lot of topics and you can spend currently a lot of time trying to exhaust the topics.

This is a re-playable game because you earn more point as you do the things in a better way. The game is middle-low difficult and some hours of gameplay.

- Jade

Grunk like, lots of fun, really liked the e character interaction and it was nice to have something on the lighter side!