The gameplay of Hogs of War is a turn-based tactics game where players take turns controlling individual members of their squad of hogs to engage in combat with the opposition, similar to Worms. Each turn, a player takes control of a single squad member in a third-person perspective to move around the map, including jumping over terrain and swimming over bodies of water, yet can only engage in combat when stationary. Each turn has a set time limit and ends if the timer counts down to zero, the player skips their turn, a weapon or ability is used or if they have accidentally injured themselves such as walking into a mine field or falling from a high surface. Other hazards include bodies of water that, while they can be swam in, is damaging to nearly all types of soldiers and drains health as they swim. If a teammate is knocked into water by an opponent, they will automatically swim to the nearby shore line. While difficult, it is also possible to knock hogs off the map resulting in instant death. If all health is gone and the player is on land, they will fall over with a last comical remark before exploding. Each squad member can be assigned a class type where they have immediate access to certain weapons and abilities. There are four main class types; heavy gunners that specialise in long range heavy weapons like bazookas, mortars and rocket launchers, engineers that specialise in explosives like grenades, mines and TNT, espionage that don't appear on the mini map and use sniper rifles and camouflage and finally medics that can heal other units in both close and long range. Despite the classes, any hog can pick up and use any weapon or ability if found in a crate that can be found across each map or dropped from blimps (that can be destroyed for further items). Other than a hog's inventory items, players can also gain access to military vehicles like tanks and semi-aquatic and stationary turrets like heavy artillery and pillboxes, both or which provide health protection until they are destroyed and in some cases allow use of highly destructive weaponry unavailable for regular use. Bunkers and MASH tents also provide further protection but without weaponry, with the latter healing a small amount at the start of their turn.