PIGSAW is a Survival Horror Video Game by Christopher
Yabsley for Itch.io's Haunted PS1 Summer Of Screams event.
In a world where humans are meat for pig people, one human is kept in a meat processing plant with many others of his kind. They spend their whole lives in small cages until they're dropped through a Trap Door underneath them to the processing area where the plant employees kill them.
That same human manages to escape his fate. Trapped in a nightmarish human abattoir, he must now traverse the plant, survive against the employees, use whatever is at his disposal, do whatever is necessary to stay alive and free the rest of his kind then escape. The Butchers are relentless; expect no mercy and give none in return.
The game was released on September 1st, 2020 and is available here. The developer would also later on join the 4th Dread X Collection with The Fruit. In 2023, Yabsley announced an expanded version of the game titled Pigsaw - Human Abattoir.
Not to be confused with Jigsaw, or the other Pigsaw used by Inkagames (AKA Mazniac.)
Pigsaw contains examples of:
- Always Chaotic Evil: Admittedly, the only pigs seen are the workers at the factory, but they give the impression that their kind are all demonic people-eaters.
- Art Evolution: The expanded game eschews the demo's Retraux and abstract vibe for a more realistic and detailed art style.
- Artifact of Hope: The shotgun is treated as such by the humans, who recognize that it's killing power evens the odds with their porcine captors.
- Barbarian Hero: What your character evolves into as the game progresses, a warrior liberating your fellow humans by slaughtering your way through the pigs with whatever you can.
- Chainsaw Good: Of the Buzzsaw variety and unfortunately good for them but not for you. All of the pig men butchers have prosthetic arms with huge buzzsaws attached to them.
- Falling Damage: Naturally you will take damage if you fall from somewhere too high. Fall from somehere even higher and there's a very large chance you're dead when you hit the ground.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Your character from the perspective of the pigs, going from just another bit of cattle to a deadly killer fighting his way through the factory.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Presumably like all the other humans in the plant you have no clothes on and you're forced to be like this for the full game while fending off the Butchers.
- Future Primitive: The humans are very tribal and primitive in their behavior, almost like cavemen. All of them are naked - either stripped by the pigs or just not wearing it at all - and they don't speak, just making grunting and screaming noises.
- Great Escape: The finale of the original game is freeing yourself and all the other captured humans from your prison and fleeing into the misty forests.
- Grid Inventory: You are given a pretty small grid-based inventory to keep all your items innote , so you should prioritize what you should carry.
- Human Resources: Humans are just food and other resources to the pigs, corralled into the factory and slaughtered for their body parts.
- I'm a Humanitarian: If you can stomach it, resort to cannibalism in a can in order to survive.
- Immersive Sim: Contains many aspects of this genre, such as a focus on immersive first-person worldbuilding and RPG elements.
- Industrialized Evil: One of the purest and intense examples put to screen, being an entire game about escaping from a gigantic, hellish factory dedicated to slaughtering humans.
- Law Of 100: The Player Character's health bar has 100 hit points.
- Nightmarish Factory: The pig-men's factory is like an industrialized version of Hell, built entirely to torture and kill humans for their meat.
- No OSHA Compliance: Between the giant exposed buzzsaw blades, pathways over steep drops, and complete lack of any kind of guardrails, how is this plant still operating?*
- One-Word Title: Pigsaw, naturally.
- People Farms: A whole game devoted to the concept, though the factory is more a slaughterhouse than a farm.
- Pig Man: The enemies of the game are anthropomorphic pigs with a buzzsaw blade in place of their right arm that feed on humans, referred to as the "Butchers".
- Pipe Pain: Your main means of protecting yourself in melee are old rusty pipes. It can take a few swings to kill butcher pig with them.
- P.O.V. Cam: The game is viewed through the Player Character's eyes.
- Punch-Clock Villain: While the Butchers are brutal, sadistic, and evil, they are ultimately just workers and can be seen doing things like taking breaks between bouts of slaughter.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The pig people have glowing red eyes in the original release. The expanded version instead gives them normal eyes.
- Retraux: The game has PSX and VHS Graphics Modes. Play the game crunchy and be weary of every pixel or play clean and slice yourself on the razor sharp polygons. The expanded version, however, features a more modernized look.
- Scannable Man: Your left arm has barcode in it to emphasize that you're livestock to these pigs.
- Scavenger World: Deep inside the walls of the factory, various humans who have escaped from the Butchers over the years have eked out a tribal society scavenging supplies from wherever they can and keeping themselves warm by huddling their "village" around the power generation. The player character isn't satisfied with that, though, and wants to full on escape from the factory.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: The final weapon you can get is a shotgun. One well-placed shot can put a pig man down.
- To Serve Man: The purpose of the processing plant, of course. Plus, one of the healing items you can find is Human Spam.
- Unbroken First-Person Perspective: The game never once leaves the perspective of your character.
- Villains Out Shopping: You can sometimes encounter Butchers on their downtime between killing humans, engaging in mundane activities like getting lunch or using the bathroom.
