If you played a lot of PS1 games growing up, there's a good chance you'll have encountered Hogs of War.
Developed by Infogrames Sheffield House (the studio formerly known as Gremlin Interactive), it was a silly turn-based 3D military strategy game that saw a group of anthropomorphic pigs battling it out across a battlefield and featured the legendary voice talents of comedian Rik Mayall. Essentially playing a bit like a 3D Worms, the game generated a strong cult following thanks to its uniquely British sense of humour, as well as its fun campaign and offline multiplayer modes.
Over the years, there have been various calls from the game's community for a remaster of the original. And now it seems that a small team, appropriately based in Sheffield, is going to the effort to make this into a reality.
Yesterday, a company called Urban Limited (run by former Gremlin Interactive CEO Ian Stewart), launched its Kickstarter for Hogs of War Lardcore, a new remaster for PS4/PS5. As revealed in a Metro interview, the project started as a master's thesis of one of the remaster's programmers Luke Melville, who was studying under the former Hogs of War developer Jacob Habgood. As part of his thesis, the programmer tried to get the original source code running on a PS4 and was successful. So the decision was made to approach Stewart (the current rights owner) with the idea of turning it into an official project.
Here's some PR for the game taken from the Kickstarter:
"23 years after its original release, our team here at Urbanscan are determined to bring Hogs of War back to the big screen! This is our first Kickstarter project, led by industry veteran and former CEO of Gremlin Interactive - Ian Stewart! We've been working in Collaboration with Steel Minions Studio and the Hogs of War community to bring you a swine filled Kickstarter campaign! Its time to get knee deep in the trenches once again, grab that rifle and lob a grenade or two, we've got bacon to fry!"
The game has currently raised £18,671 of its £150,000 goal. If you want to support the project, you can back it here. The cheapest option available that will net you a digital copy of the game is £40. This comes with other digital rewards such as a comic book, art book, and stream emotes.