A Machine for Pigs is a first-person puzzle and exploration game in which a man named Oswald Mandus wakes up in his house with no memory of what happened.
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Story & Themes
A Machine for Pigs takes place in London in 1899. A man named Oswald Mandus wakes up with no memory of who he is and what has happened. As he explores his massive house, following the ghostly voices of his sons Edwin and Enoch, he begins to receive phone calls from someone who tells him that he must rescue the boys from a machine that Mandus built.
As he explores the house and the grounds, Mandus finds his own old journal entries, as well as phonograph recordings and diaries from his children. It is revealed the Mandus is a wealthy butcher whose giant factory has been sabotaged. The children are trapped in “the Machine,” which Mandus needs to restart. Of course, not all is as it seems and Mandus discovers terrible truths about his past actions—he built the machine after an ill-fated trip to Mexico where he saw a horrible vision of the tragedies of the 21st century—as well as the terrible effects of colonialism on the Mexican people.
The purpose of the machine is to industrialize human sacrifice, in order to bring about a new mechanized god and save humanity from itself. The machine has already been at work creating monstrous human/pig hybrids. Later in the game, these pigmen are released and throw London into chaos as they murder people and feed their bodies to the machine. Mandus realizes what a horrible mistake he has made and sacrifices himself to destroy the machine.
The overarching theme of A Machine for Pigs is about how industrialized society treats humans workers no better than pigs. The metaphor is rather hammered home, visually and textually. AMFP critiques in turn an uncaring upper class that uses the poor like cogs in a wheel, as well as the lower class that files unthinkingly into factories.
Save Points
A Machine for Pigs (AMFP) can be saved any time.
Heads Up!
Violence When Mandus is attacked by pigmen, there are blood smudges on the screen. There are also blood spatters around the environment. In terms of graphic violence, the game isn't as explicit as some, but the implied violence (cannibalism, human experimentation, etc.) is powerful and fairly horrifying.
Scary Imagery A Machine for Pigs is, unsurprisingly, chock full of horror! Players will be hunted by hybrid pigmen in dark corridors, and urged onward by ghostly children. The horrible factory environment is well-designed, with dead pigs, fecal matter, and hideous machines. Notes and diary entries found throughout the game contain horrifying descriptions of death and disease, as well as the horrible experiments that Mandus carried out on people to perfect his machine.
From the dead pigs, to the pigmen, to the machine itself, the game is intended to disturb and unsettle the player. At one point, literal rivers of blood run through the factory.
Sex & Nudity Some of the notes that Mandus finds reference sexual activity, likening humans to pigs.
There is a painting in Mandus’s house of a woman with one breast exposed. Of more concern is that she appears to be cooking someone’s leg in a pot. There are naked human corpses, and one male corpse that Mandus finds face-down in the street has visible genitalia.
Strong Language Strong language is used in diaries and notes throughout the game, as well as dialogue.
Conversation Starters
- Horror games introduce us to concepts that make us very uncomfortable. Do you find the pig hybrids disturbing? What was the most disturbing part of the game for you?
- What did you think of the puzzles in this game? Did they fit in with the Victorian/Industrial aesthetic of the game? Were the puzzles easy to solve?
- What, for you, was the scariest part of this game?
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