A Pig Game: A Pee Wee Premiere Review (PC)

Before Tin Hearts, there was I Am Bread. Before that, there was Toy Story. And in between those three we had the likes of Mini Royale and, for good measure, SkateBIRD (not that we talk about SkateBIRD.) The reason why I’m bringing these games to the limelight is because A Pig Game: A Pee Wee Premiere, too, falls from a similar lineage of bite-sized sandboxes and room-based shenanigans. Like the aforementioned IPs, A Pig Game builds its world around the “big things in small packages” concept—an idea that opts to centerline physics-based mechanics and chalk out a big ol’ line beneath an oversized map with pocket-sized subjects for protagonists. The only standout difference between those titles and this, of course, is the ceramic pig.

A Pig Game: A Pee Wee Premiere is a peculiar game, I’ll give it that. It’s a peculiar game, not just because it centers its premise around a ceramic pig, but because it incorporates highly illogical, albeit hilarious tidbits, bizarre quest lines, and, for some reason that I’m still trying to understand, toothpicks for collectibles. And that’s not all. Oh, A Pee Wee Premiere also features a generously designed pantry setting, wholesome NPCs with palpable dialogue archways, and a treasure trove of unorthodox time-based missions, puzzles, races, and platforming challenges—the latter of which grants you the opportunity to soar and glide through the world and, if you’re lucky, earn a few nifty rewards en route to that all-important toothpick haven.

Clearly, there’s quite a lot to unpack here, and so, for the sake of lathering a bit of extra context to the story, allow us to dial it back a notch.

Break Toothpicks, Not Pigs

A Pig Game: A Pee Wee Premiere is a third-person, physics-based adventure game, one in which you, the puppeteer of said ceramic pig, must carefully navigate a kitchen in search of toothpicks and other peculiar items. Why toothpicks, you ask? Join the club; it’s not as if anything else here makes a lick of sense. Yet, we digress regardless, because we have no other choice but to shovel forward, really.

As I said, A Pee Wee Premiere takes quite a huge bite out of I Am Bread’s toaster oven. By that I mean, as a player, you have the monumental task of exploring an oversized world as a small and seemingly fragile hero, and completing various challenges whilst working to accomplish an overarching mission. Again, there’s a lot to digest here, too, with the opening segments of the journey providing just a slither of the content that the campaign has in its entirety. Alas, the concept is all rather straightforward: a breakable pig explores a kitchen, and a few eccentric NPCs spring out from beneath the woodwork to offer fetch quests, races, and platforming-based obstacle courses for said pig to complete in exchange for traversable upgrades, like the ability to glide, for example. Is there a point to any of this? Not really, no.

Can’t Make an Omelette Without Breaking a Few Eggs

Given that A Pee Wee Premiere is, above all, a platforming game at heart, the bulk of your time here is spent jumping (and falling) and timing your moves (…and forgetting to land them.) With all of that out in the open, it’s worth mentioning here that a lot of the game is very luck based. I can’t say that it’s a tedious process, learning how to tackle inanimate objects and glide across kitchenware without breaking a few trotters, but there is a learning curve to it. Naturally, you do fall, and you do wind up spending more time on one thing than another, oftentimes contemplating whether or not said obstacle is structurally correct or if you’re just awful at platforming. Guilty as charged.

Aside from the occasional hiccup and teething issue with the base mechanics, A Pee Wee Premiere does, in all fairness, offer a lot of bang for your buck, with a sizable campaign that is, while still limited in scope, bursting at the seams with things to see and do. Also, it offers several different ways to explore the world, with makeshift objects providing an alternate way to traverse both simple and tricky terrain. Does the novelty wear off after a while? Sure. But does it do enough to keep you trotting around and completing random quests? Absolutely.

I suppose it helps, in ways, that A Pee Wee Premiere features some charming visual effects and homely comforts. It’s cute, no doubt about that. But that isn’t to say that it’s all sunshine and rainbows, mind you. Oh, there are a few jitters here that effectively bog down the overall experience—camera stutters, inept responses, and a couple of other minor issues that make an otherwise entertaining journey annoyingly difficult to navigate. Hiccups, if anything.

Verdict

A Pig Game: A Pee Wee Premiere might not rustle up the most exciting banquet in the kitchen, but it does come clean with some ridiculously engaging palate-pleasing platforming moments for you to enjoy. And, again, while the map could do with a few extra wards to really push the boat out, the amount of content that it does squeeze into its bite-sized region is still a barrel of laughs to roam around, be it on trotters or broken fragments of pink ceramic. That counts for a lot, truly.

To cut a long story short, if you enjoy weird but wonderful platforming games like I Am Bread, Tin Hearts, or Goat Simulator, then you ought to feel right at home with A Pig Game: A Pee Wee Premiere. As for whether or not you are likely to find enough to warrant the price tag, however, is another question. Regardless, A Pee Wee Premiere has the potential to expand and latch onto plenty of other features in the future; a few additional maps would be the icing on the cake. Here’s hoping, then, that the devs continue to add a few more lashings of porcelain into the pot. Fingers crossed.