Sometimes, the last thing you need in life is a hole in the head. But what happens when such a morbid request comes to fruition after some blunt force head trauma and a past riddled with terrible regrets? Naturally, you’re recruited into a mysterious plot to take down mask-wearing maniacs with wanton gore and grime galore.
PIGFACE, developed by titolovesyou and published by DreadXP, promises such a grotesque show of violence and then some. With a combination of sandbox-style levels, copious amounts of grunginess in every dark corner, and a narrative that promises a mix of intrigue and shadowy developments, this tense first-person horror game is sure to please your inner monster. But what can you glean from the game’s recently-released demo on Steam? And how does it set the stage for the game’s future release later this year?
No Exit Plan
PIGFACE wastes no time in getting its grim story rolling. After a brief preamble, you find yourself awakening in the confines of a decrepit warehouse, beaten, bloodied, and with a searing pain in the back of your head. The ring of a cell phone connects you to a mysterious voice, who coldly claims that the very same pain you’re feeling is tied to an explosive device that’s been planted in your skull. You do as you’re told, or you die.
But things aren’t all bad. Though you’re now at the whims of whoever your mysterious handler is, you’re not ill-equipped for the situation. As you navigate the warehouse, it becomes apparent that your handler has paid a handful of masked individuals to take you out in any way they can. But weapons are plentiful, and after using the ensuing slaughter as a malicious training exercise, you’re ferried to an equally dingy apartment via a squad of heavily armed guards and a rusted minivan. Your life is three-fold now: find a location, grab your gear, and go out and kill.
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Though PIGFACE’s demo is limited to a single regular mission outside of its intro sequence, it still gives a good idea of what to expect from the ensuing game. The apartment serves as your general base of operations, allowing you to change “costumes” (what your arms look like), purchase weapons with earnings from your completed missions, and grab masks that grant you useful buffs. Once you’re ready to take on a mission, your subsequent minivan ride allows you to pick your bloody tools of the trade before you’re unceremoniously dumped off at the edge of your target destination, away from the prying eyes of violent thugs and sadists. From there, it’s up to you how to get things done. Do you want to keep your presence (and casualties) down to a minimum? Do you want to just go in guns blazing? Maybe a mix of both?
I tried exactly that as I was tasked to retrieve some drug samples and loose documents from a farmhouse crawling with masked creeps. You might think the best approach is to take things on Manhunt-style — stick to the shadows, pick your targets carefully, hide bodies to disguise your presence, etc. You’d certainly be forgiven for assuming so. The game’s visuals, caked in a deep layer of VHS filters and low-poly assets, certainly convey this kind of overwhelmingly oppressive atmosphere that would just as soon kill you as the many foes you come across would. But not so. In fact, I found that taking a more proactive approach was much more useful.
Stealth was admittedly hard for me to grasp, though I can’t help but think that was intentional. A single blast from my shotgun should’ve presumably alerted everyone at the farmhouse, yet nobody seemed to bat an eye as I blew buckshot into someone’s back at close range. Likewise, knocking someone in the back of the head with a baseball bat and sending them careening 10 feet away only managed to draw the attention of some poor soul who caught it in his peripherals. In the brief time I spent with it, sneaking and sulking around in the darkness felt more in line with how it was handled in something like F.E.A.R., where it’s more of a means to get the drop on a dangerous battle instead of vice versa.
I felt much more at home plugging away at whatever stumbled by with whatever munitions I could readily find. I quickly dropped my shotgun for one of the plentiful submachine guns that were being lugged around, and being able to carefully place potshots at heads or wildly spray into pairs of thugs as they started to encroach on my position fit like a glove. It was equal parts visceral and even hilarious, at points.
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Just about any attack on your foes will sprawl them out on the floor, not outright killing them just yet (barring the occasional exception), but instead turning them into a spindly ragdoll that quickly tries to scamper back up to their feet. It’s amusing, sure, but it’s also somewhat strategic. Launching a few rounds their way from a firearm will often knock them down, giving you an opportunity to scurry away to a better vantage point or to take some precious morphine. Likewise, weaker melee weapons may need multiple strikes to bring a single bad guy down, making their use cases against firearms feel much more unique and intimate when ammo conservation becomes a major concern. Being able to throw melee weapons certainly adds a bit more variety as well.
You’ll need to use whatever you can find to survive since your inventory space is deliberately limited. One melee weapon, one gun, one healing item — that’s all you’re allotted to carry at a time, making knowledge of the map and enemy behaviors just as important as your own skills and reaction time. You’re no tank, either. After a few hits, you’ll have to either find a space to hide or rifle through whatever bits of debris are nearby to find a shot of morphine; otherwise, you’ll meet your premature demise. Oh, and your ensuing hospital bills are taken out of your current pay.
Should You Try PIGFACE?
Although PIGFACE, in its current state, is only a taste of what’s to come, I was pretty engaged with what it had to offer. It’s far from perfect — the game’s AI can be pretty aggressive and intelligent at times, or absolute dullards other times, and a lack of comprehensive settings is admittedly a bit of a turn-off. But again, this is just a demo. As a vertical slice of a much more ambitious game, it does a fine enough job of establishing the full game’s potential gameplay loop and its overall atmosphere.
If Butcher’s Creek is a loving tribute to Manhunt, I’d almost want to say that PIGFACE feels more in touch with Manhunt 2. It’s even more over-the-top, the body count is much higher, and the prevalence of guns encourages a speedier, more intense approach to its many scenes of gruesome violence. Thankfully, PIGFACE doesn’t seem to have a blatant narrative twist and dull QTE minigames to accompany its grim narrative. If you’re at all interested in something particularly morbid this summer, PIGFACE might just be the grimy game for you.
Make sure to check out the demo for PIGFACE yourself on Steam. As of writing, PIGFACE is currently slated for an Early Access release in August 2025.
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