Piggy Piggy is an adorable fast-paced game of hogging food and stealing hogs. This game is bright and whimsical fun for all the family.
How to Play
In Piggy Piggy, the aim of the game is to be the first player to score eight points. On a player’s turn, they place down in front of them all the cards they have in their hand of one of the five food types. They can optionally play as many goat cards as they like to discard cards that others have already placed in front of them. If, after they have played these cards, they have the most icons of one food type (each food card has 1 to 3 icons), whether by how many they’ve placed themselves, or discarded from others, they gain the pig figurine of that food type. If they have stolen the pig from another player, that player discards all of the food cards of that type from in front of them. If the player has not gained the highest value in that round, they have the opportunity to add more cards to their stack in later rounds until they do. Once any pigs that can be stolen have been, the player then draws cards up to 5 from the deck (for example if they now have two cards, they pick up three, or if they have one they pick up four). If any of the cards that they pick up are the same colour as a pig that they have ownership of, they place the card to the side to add to their score pile. Any other cards that they have in their hand are then playable for their next turn (you won’t necessarily have five cards available to play each turn). Once someone’s score pile reaches eight, they win!
A Tasty Treat
Piggy Piggy has enough complexity to be endlessly entertaining, but not so much to be really confusing to newcomers. I like the direct player interaction in stealing pigs from one another as it gives great opportunities for revenge swiping and wholesome targeting to occur. Whilst it is advantageous to have as many pigs as possible, this is actually quite difficult to achieve, because as soon as you have a pig, you immediately become a target for all the other players and so pigs switch hands very regularly. I think that how they have introduced scoring, in drawing cards and scoring those matching your pigs, is a very smooth way of doing this, as it means that people can’t just keep adding food to the piles of pigs they own. This makes it relatively easy to overthrow someone’s pig monopoly as they can’t restore cards lost to goats, or protectively increase their stash as someone else is on the rise in that food type. It feels like a very balanced and fair mechanic.
Piggy Piggy also has great style in its presentation. The little pig figurines are adorable, and the physicality of statuettes makes for much more engaging play than if they were just two-dimensional tokens. The card art is also variable across the pack, with multiple illustrations for each food type, keeping the pieces enjoyable and varied to look at. This is similarly true for the game box, as it is shaped like a pig and so makes an interesting-looking addition to any board game shelf.
Utter Hogwash
Piggy Piggy is a very well-rounded game and so I can’t find any gameplay aspects to critique.
However, I would say the theming is a bit of an odd choice. The food types are all different types of fast food: donuts, french fries, tacos, ice cream and sushi. The colours of the pigs are all bright and engaging apart from the sushi pig, who’s colour is grey, which I feel is a strange decision, when green would be a perfectly acceptable colour (as seaweed is right there), that would have fitted in more with the rest of the scheme. Equally, the whole fast food theme in general feels like a questionable choice to me. I understand that pigs will eat pretty much all organic substances and that children are encouraged by these sorts of food. But are these the messages we really should be sending out to our kids? I’d argue that pigs are much more associated with farms and crops than fast food, and these would have worked equally well as a theming structure. Fruits, vegetables and grains still have a variety of bright colours that the game designers could have chosen, which I personally feel would have worked just as well, if not better, with the pig theming.
Squealing with Joy or Boar-ed to Tears?
Overall, Piggy Piggy has really slick and enjoyable gameplay. Player interaction is really well embedded in the play style and there isn’t any motivation to target a singular player throughout the game, as the pigs change hands so frequently. There also isn’t any real disparity with different skill levels, making it perfect for playing across the board. Piggy Piggy also has some really cute character design that is really well incorporated into its pieces, although the fast food theming isn’t really to my taste.
