Pass the Pigs Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

A game about pigs.

I never really thought of Dice having a natural successor until I started playing Pass the Pig. For those who don't know the game, check it out on wikipedia. What you'll find is that it's a game where you roll pigs instead of dice (no, not real ones) and depending how they land you will get different points.

You can choose to either bank the points or risk rolling again, but beware as there is a reasonably high chance you'll make a roll where you lose all your points (both pigs lying on their side with one spot facing upwards and one spot facing downwards) so it's down to you as to whether you bank the points or not.

Unlike the weakest link in which you probably decide to bank the money based on how hard you think the next question is, in this game it's supposed to be statistical probability. Unfortunately what the developers seemed to have done is make the rolls completely random.

There is a roll meter which builds up and then back down again. The instructions say that the lower the meter, the less likely of high scores, pig outs (not good) and oinkers (also not good). So I guess they are telling you to roll high. Which I did for ages and found it was still completely random. Then I tried rolling low and found the same thing! So it seems that it doesn't matter how you roll!!

The game allows you to play with up to 4 players in classic mode and you can also play against an AI. It seems to be an exact recreation of the original, so it may well be fun for boring journeys where you have nothing else to do. There are a few variations of the scoring and probability of the pigs landing that you can unlock.

Speaking of unlocking, there are 23 hats to unlock. Apart from giving the pig a comical appearance, I'm not sure what these do exactly. You can unlock some by playing classic mode and getting some high scores or finishing the game quickly. But most hats are unlocked through the It's a Pig's Life mode. Now I'm not sure what the developers had in mind with this mode. You start off as a piglet and progress through the four ages of life, making decisions along the way. These decisions will affect the amount of love and money you accumulate. It's also affected by you playing the normal Pass the Pig rounds in between making decisions.

If you get a certain number of points or make specific decisions, then you seem to win hats, but like the rolling of the pigs, this seems a bit random. I played through a couple of times making different decisions each time and got some hats which didn't really seem to have any bearing on what I was doing. Apart from this, I guess the aim is to beat your high score.

Graphics are fun and colourful. Certainly the hats look pretty funny on the pigs and the animation of the rolls are nicely done. The It's a Pig's Life mode doesn't require a lot of animation unfortunately as you just see your pig standing there, maybe getting a bit fatter as he gets older then a bit thinner as he gets younger. Weird. Sound is some funky tune with minimal sound effects.

Overall a strange port of a strange game which may entertain some, but didn't really entertain me. It's not a bad game, there's just not a lot to it, and the It's a Pig's Life mode was a bit random if I'm honest. The hats are funny though.