What is BARPIG?
Legend tells of a tavern called BARPIG, a place deep in the woods where adventuring pigs go to challenge themselves and reign piggy supreme...
BARPIG is a culmination of hilariously fun group activities to challenge you friends, but watch out! Those same friends might be harboring deliciously vindictive item cards to back-stab you with and turn the game in their favour.
Add to this an RPG-like level system to make it competitive, damage system to keep it vindictive, and a dice to determine initiative and you get BARPIG – The Adventure Party Game: The pocket-sized adventure party game for anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere.
Players take turns based on a dice roll to come one level closer to the winning level 5, whereafter they challenge their fellow players to silly group activities and challenges.
Losing these not only cost you precious drinks on your bar tab, but also impact your character’s sobriety. Lose too many “Sober points” and your character might find themselves ‘blacking out’, sending you back to level 1!
Help is at hand however, in form of fun and wacky items. ‘Bought’ using that same bar tab, these have a multitude of effects like changing the group challenge, stealing the winning dice roll, or even cancelling another just-played item.
Playable for groups from 3 to 7 players, BARPIG features 10 characters each with their own unique challenges combined with 13 different deliciously vindictive item cards to back-stab your friends with in this fight for supremacy.
And yes, there will be pigs.
Want to know more? Check out this 53 second video…
Or check out our How To Play instructions
Once upon a time…
BARPIG started life as a collection of silly puns we wrote down on a bar napkin a year and a half ago. It quickly became a hobby project with friends, who’s encouragement led us to bring the game to the market in it’s initial beta version, BaRPG (a Bar…RPG). We worked together with our friend and talented artist Marie-Jeanne Jacobs to develop our very first logo, and launched in May 2016 with a limited production run of 200 units. Out first flip-top boxes folded and stuck by hand in our very own living room using an exacto knife and double sided carpet tape (definition of cottage industry).
We sold out all 200 packs in just 6 months using indie marketing techniques and working closely with local retailers. Through the process we garnered an incredible amount of experience as well as feedback on our game. We knew it could be more, and after visiting the Spiel game convention in 2016 in Essen, Germany, we knew how to further develop our creation.
Where BaRPG was originally played with a beverage (you took sips as you lost points), BARPIG now replaced the glass with a monetary resource system. This added an incredible extra strategic element to the game. The name also changed, more as a pun at how our game was sometimes mispronounced by people who didn’t see the ‘RPG’ reference (“Whats this Bar-Pig?”). It also gave us a great way to add an anthomoporphic element to our characters. Who doesn’t love pigs?
In November 2016 we released the first prototype of BaRPiG at the Spellenspektakel convention in the Netherlands. It was an immediate hit, and we knew our next step was to launch our pocket-sized party game worldwide on Kickstarter.
By March 2017 we were ready to launch our game on Kickstarter, and whilst we didn’t reach our goal we got close, amounting over €4000. It was also then that we realised launching a Kickstarter required a different approach. The process had again taught us a lot, and gave us the chance to receive more feedback from an ever wider audience.
One of the main elements most of our backers were missing was the visual design element. Marie-Jeanne had created beautiful work and done a great job at translating Phil’s character descriptions. However, her portfolio is limited in game design. It was at this point we approached visual artist Frederick van de Bunt, who was responsible for the fantastic work on Revenge of the Dictators, by Black Box Adventures (who by this stage we had befriended through the industry).
Frederick took Marie-Jeanne’s artwork and streamlined the characters into a single style and approach. He also saw a theme that would work in the game, the idea that the characters were adventurers, challenging each other in a medieval tavern. That tavern was called BARPIG. This is where the new logo evolved as a tavern sign, and the characters were drawn in their bar scene.
With the new artwork and card designs, a more streamlined campaign, and greater press attention, we relaunched BARPIG on Kickstarter on July 6th 2017. The changes were a success, and within 32 hours we had reached our funding goal. 30 days later our Kickstarter closed at a whopping €11,600, over 360% funded past our goal.
Now with copies of BARPIG being played across the corners of the globe as far as New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, and Brazil, BARPIG reaches wide international audience each day.
The 2017 Spiel Gaming convention in Essen marks our market release of our first edition of BARPIG.
In 2019 we launched our sequel, stand-alone game that also doubled as an expansion, BARPIG: After Hours. Taking players to the darker side of the BARPIG Tavern, After Hours features 10 brand new Characters with unique challenges, and a plethora of new item cards offering players even meaner ways to back-stab their friends.
With a further third expansion pack on the horizon, and growing attention from the gaming industry, BARPIG has begun to take the world by storm.
So whether you are a new little piggy coming fresh into market or a veteran BaRPG’er looking to finish your quest, we humbly introduce to you BARPIG, the wacky, crazy, highly vindictive party game!
