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This week, players can get their hands on a charming, retro RPG that does something different with a familiar formula. No, I don’t mean Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined. I mean Hermit and Pig, the debut game from Heavy Lunch LLC. While its goofy premise sounds like something ripped right out of a Saturday morning cartoon, this Earthbound-inspired gem has a lot more going for it than silly jokes.
Hermit and Pig is an accidental hero tale — and a refreshing one at that. The eponymous duo, an old man and his truffle-hunting pal, are minding their business in their off-grid forest home, hunting mushrooms, turning the produce from their outhouse into the material from which new life is born, generally being chill. After the animals start acting strange, a talkative child turns up seeking help from the local weirdo (her words, not mine). Some nefarious corporation shut down her town’s factory, and now everyone’s out of work and hungry. Who better to help than the legendary truffle hunter of the woods?
Well, that person doesn’t exist, so it’s up to Hermit, maybe. Lucky for the townsfolk, Hermit knows of a legend about a giant shroom that can feed a lot of people, so off he and his trotter trot to see if they can do something to help.
Hermit doesn’t like people all that much, but not in an antagonistic kind of way. They just make him nervous, and talking makes it worse. (Important conversations are even framed like battles, where picking the “cringe” answer reduces Hermit’s HP.) He’d rather just hang out with Pig in the woods. He doesn’t think there’s a whole lot he can do to help the town, but since there’s a chance he might be able to make things better, he does it.
Hermit and Pig is unabashedly anti-corporation and critiques capitalism freely, but so do a lot of other indie games that want to make a statement. It’s an easy creative choice and one with a large, eager audience. Hermit and Pig stands out for not making the easy target its focus. “Corpo bad,” yes, but the real standout message is the quiet one about how everyone, even the strange anxious man in the woods, has something to give and can help in small ways. Maybe it won’t fix the problem. Maybe it won’t even work. But it’s something.
Heavy Lunch handles its critiques and the humor they’re couched in exceptionally well. Comedy is not easy to pull off, and I’m usually wary of “funny” games and Earthbound-likes, which tend to copy the style of their inspirations without the soul. Heavy Lunch takes a reserved approach to almost every line of dialogue and prose that lets you hear the characters and not the writers, something more games could stand to imitate. Hermit doesn’t try to be funny. His awkwardness naturally leads to comedic scenarios. Pig could easily be a tired imitation of a stoner bro, but he’s not amusing because he’s chill. The comedy comes from just how completely nonplussed he is by everything going on and how much more interesting he finds his own (extremely naive) thoughts about life and death. And, y’know, the fact that he’s a talking pig.
Not every joke lands, but I was surprised by how often gags I thought were a bit flat had some purpose later on. Early on, I found a grave with the name Arthur on it. “The snapping turtle got him,” the epitaph reads. It seemed like a forced attempt at being quirky, until five minutes later when I encountered the game’s first boss: a large, violent snapping turtle. Poor Arthur.
Hermit and Pig is frequently absurd in ways that remind me of classic ’90s cartoons like Dexter’s Laboratory and Cow and Chicken, but Heavy Lunch knows how to balance the absurdity without going overboard. The weirdness always fits a situation in some way and is never overdone to the point of being obnoxious, another benefit of the game’s reserved script. And it feels natural. You just accept things like quiche-baking man-pigs, cat detectives, post-industrial witches, and a town full of people happy to eat only mushrooms for the foreseeable future exist in Hermit and Pig‘s world. This is a game that’s confident in its silliness. It shows through not just in the script, but in a lot of attention to detail in things like character expressions and conversation timing (for example, a sardine-loving gremlin who dogs your steps during a routine fetch quest) that give Hermit and Pig a distinct identity beyond being just another retro-inspired RPG.
Hermit and Pig‘s combat gets the same attention, which is further proof that indie developers are the way forward for RPGs. It looks like your standard turn-based system… initially. Hermit is in the foreground facing his enemies across the field with a row of menu options at the screen’s border, all very Earthbound-esque. The first wrinkle shows up quickly, though. You have to make a string of key inputs for Hermit and Pig to attack, almost like a streamlined fighting game. One input makes Hermit lash out with a cane, while another directs him to slap a target or punch or kick it. It’s a small twist on the genre’s usual menu-based input commands, but one that — combined with a timer that counts down while you decide what to do — adds a welcome sense of urgency and strategy to every battle.
There’s also an option to shut the timer and quick-time input events off if you need it, and Hermit and Pig loses none of its inventiveness without them. Every enemy has a specific weakness tied to its nature, one that might change depending on how the fight progresses. A spider appears dangling on a thread of silk, so a slingshot or maybe a slap attack is best to start with. Once it’s on the ground? Stomp that sucker into eternity. Stepping on a snake is not a great idea, but hitting it from a distance with your cane is. And some enemies require a different approach depending on their behavior during battle. Birds go low to attack your feet and become vulnerable to physical attacks, while porcupines occasionally ball up and become invulnerable, so you have to time your attacks just right. Heavy Lunch expects you to pay attention and rewards you for doing it, and while the skillsets might be limited, Hermit and Pig puts them to use exceptionally well.
Major publishers might have convinced themselves that there’s no more life in traditional combat systems and that RPGs have to be big and cinematic to be worth an audience’s time, but Hermit and Pig is proof to the contrary. Sometimes you just need a little guy, his talking pig, and an oddball spirit.
