External Links


Story File (z8)
The latest release.
Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
Story File (blorb)
The latest release.
Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
Story File v1
The original competition entry.
Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.

Have you played this game?

You can rate this game, record that you've played it, or put it on your wish list after you log in.

Playlists and Wishlists

RSS Feeds

New member reviews
Updates to external links
All updates to this page

Lost Pig

by Admiral Jota profile

Fantasy, Humor
2007

Web Site

(based on 485 ratings)
53 reviews

About the Story

Pig lost! Boss say that it Grunk fault. Say Grunk forget about closing gate. Maybe boss right. Grunk not remember forgetting, but maybe Grunk just forget.

-- IFComp 2007 blurb


Game Details


Awards

1st Place overall; 1st Place, Miss Congeniality Awards - 13th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2007)

Winner, Best Game; Winner, Best Writing; Nominee, Best Setting; Nominee, Best Puzzles; Nominee, Best NPCs; Winner, Best Individual NPC; Winner, Best Individual PC; Nominee, Best Use of Medium - 2007 XYZZY Awards

2nd Place - Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time (2011 edition)

5th Place - Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time (2015 edition)

2nd Place - Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time (2019 edition)

8th Place - Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time (2023 edition)

Editorial Reviews

Gaming Enthusiast
There’s no better game if you want to take a breather from more serious and complex titles and simply to have a great time. Definitely a gem in the comedic genre.
See the full review

Jay Is Games
What's great is that Lost Pig is on the lighter side. I found myself laughing most of the time while I gleefully wandered around. Grunk narrates the game in caveman-like diction, but this element never became annoying to me. It really serves to absorb you into the amiable character. The game isn't very long but offers up a relatively good challenge, particularly if you are unfamiliar with the genre.
See the full review

Play This Thing!
It's got neat puzzles, it's got a good sense of humor, and it's insanely responsive. All kinds of odd, esoteric, or silly actions are catered for, and that keeps the game entertaining even when you're temporarily stuck for a solution.
See the full review

Onion A. V. Club

While the game is short, and a few of the puzzles rely on conveniently magical explanations, Lost Pig makes a hilarious case for why text still matters.
See the full review

PC Gamer
Grunk an orc, and not good at description; detailed expository introspections on combining inherently ludic nature of interactive fiction and unconventional prose style not Grunk’s thing. But Grunk’s story funny.
See the full review

PopMatters
By far, the most fascinating part of the game is to see these two characters interact, Grunk and the gnome. Grunk’s limited intelligence is pitted against Gnome’s infinite patience. The game will give you random suggestions on what you can ask, and these suggestions never seem to run out. I spent over an hour ignoring the rest of the game just to talk to this gnome.
See the full review

Wyrmis.com

Well crafted, not too long, requires pleasantly clever choices, and written strongly through to the end. Excellent IF title. Going up there as one of my favorites.
See the full review

Jörgs Wort[be]reich
Rezension zum IF-Comp 2007 (German)
Du bist ein Ork auf der Suche nach einem Schwein, das deinem Chef gehört und stiften gegangen ist. Dies führt dich des nächtens in den Wald, und bald darauf findest du dich in der unterirdischen Behausung eines alchimistisch interessierten Gnoms wieder. Die Sau hast du damit aber noch nicht im Sack...

Der Erzählstil bedient sich des grammatikalischen Verständnisses unseres Hauptdarstellers -- Grunk. Das hört sich anstrengend an, wurde aber so liebevoll und geschickt umgesetzt, daß es tatsächlich schon den ersten Humorbonus dafür gibt. Sämtliche Standardantworten scheinen ebenfalls daraufhin angepaßt worden zu sein, was von großer Gründlichkeit seitens des Autors zeugt. ...
See the full review

Tags

- View the most common tags (What's a tag?)

(Log in to add your own tags)
Tags you added are shown below with checkmarks. To remove one of your tags, simply un-check it.

Enter new tags here (use commas to separate tags):

Member Reviews

5 star:
(269)
4 star:
(181)
3 star:
(32)
2 star:
(1)
1 star:
(2)
Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 53
Write a review


Most Helpful Member Reviews


47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
10 year olds review Lost Pig, October 14, 2008
by Mike Sousa (Massachusetts)

It was very fun and exciting and I liked the characters, especially Grunk. I liked the part with the bread machine. I also liked that whatever you ordered Grunk to do he did, including burping. I also liked that one thing led to another and you had to do things in order to solve the game.

I enjoyed how the game felt realistic, like it really was happening. The gnome dude was really cool and nice. It's not like you can talk to a gnome every day! I also enjoyed the fact that you had to be precise on your commands. I thought it was cool that you had to say exact directions... not like right,and left. More of N,NW,NS,E,SW,SE,S,AND WEST. It was an awesome game. I hope there are other games with Grunk included!!!!!!

Raquel & Liza
Age 10

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
Practically perfect, September 21, 2009

I can't really add much to what has been said about this game already, except to say that I simply found it virtually perfect. The writing is absolutely beautiful, consistently funny, and often surprisingly moving. That is partly because Grunk, as a character, has such integrity and believability. Although presented as incredibly dense, the way he describes locations and objects, often incorporating quite shrewd observations along the way, suggests that he's not all that stupid at all. That gives him depth and emotional resonance. It must be said also that by having Grunk narrate the game in its entirety offers a neat approach to the problem of who the parser is supposed to be, and whether the narrator of the game is a different person from the PC. This game solves that problem by identifying the PC with the narrator, although at the cost of distancing the player from the PC (if Grunk is telling me what's going on, I'm clearly not Grunk, just in case I'd had any uncertainty on that score). There's no emotional distancing though, because Grunk is so engaging a personality.

The puzzles are nicely logical and the gnome NPC has a dry, educated wit that meshes perfectly with Grunk's rather more straightforward approach to life. There are a truly vast number of things you can ASK GNOME ABOUT, most of which have no bearing on the game itself, although some of course contain vital clues. It's a lot of fun to explore these topics, although this can result in the gnome seeming a bit like one of those information-dispenser sort of NPCs who are inexplicably willing to be grilled at length by over-curious PCs. But the gnome's sardonic wit and the fact that he's busily doing other things whilst satisfying Grunk's curiosity make him much more than a talking pedia.

The pig also has a lot of character, making this whole thing rather like one of those children's books that adults can also enjoy. I liked the author's attention to detail, which often brought out extra little elements of the characters (e.g. try taking your trousers off in front of the pig). I must admit that having apparently completed the game I was puzzled by how to gain the elusive last point and looked it up fully in the hints. I rather wished I hadn't, not only as it would have been more fun to work out by myself, but also because the behaviour required to get the last point is the sort of behaviour that I instinctively engage in when playing this sort of game anyway, but generally don't bother, because it seems not to matter. The fact that it mattered in this game says a great deal about it. This is a game with heart.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | View comments (1) - Add comment 

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
GRUNK PANTS ON FIRE!, November 23, 2007
by Kake (London, England)
Related reviews: IF Competition 2007, *****, Admiral Jota

Aw, this is brilliant! Excellent attention to detail, and an awful lot of fun. It's well worth playing around and trying silly things that have no chance of advancing the game, just because the responses are so funny (e.g. try taking your pants off in company). Besides that, the implementation's solid, the puzzles make sense, Grunk and the pig both have a lot of character, and the ending is quite uplifting.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

See All 53 Member Reviews

If you enjoyed Lost Pig...

Related Games

Other members recommend this game for people who like Lost Pig:

A Flustered Duck, by Jim Aikin
Average member rating: (11 ratings)
You play as Elliott, a pig-boy. It starts when Granny Grabby orders you to get Mabel the duck down from the roof. You try, but a series of unfortunate events ensue ending with Mabel swallowing the diamond ring you planned to give to...

Suggest a game

Recommended Lists

Lost Pig appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Must try by Kku2611
I am new to IF and collect all of the recommended games under a list for future consulting.

My favourite games by Reeah
These are some games that I have really enjoyed playing. If you are new to interactive fiction and don’t know where to begin, these are some games I have really liked and I think you will too. The games are in no particular order.

Follow your nose! by palindrome
Games that allow the player to investigate with more than just their eyes.

See all lists mentioning this game

Polls

The following polls include votes for Lost Pig:

Games with stupid player characters by murphy_slaw
I'm looking for games where the player character is significantly stupider and/or less observant than the average player - the kind of game where part of the challenge is making sense of the descriptions offered through the simplistic...

PC's personality integrated with the story by JasonMel
I would like to be able to recommend to someone many examples of interactive fiction in which the player character is far from a cipher or an everyman or everywoman, but is instead a character with a definite personality within a game...

Canonicity and IF by juliaofbath
I'm interested in determining whether or not a clear canon has emerged within the world of IF/hypertext. Of course, there is a clear critical opinion regarding which works belong to this tentative canon, but I'm interested in what...

See all polls with votes for this game




This is version 23 of this page, edited by blue/green on 21 March 2021 at 4:31am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page