Guide young Finley through his first weeks at a provincial hospital. He is on fire for his apprenticeship as an internist. But a lot of pressure makes Finley's life difficult and our gameplay challenging.
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As someone who's worked in the healthcare industry at the height of the pandemic, this game really hit me. It's a little flawed and ends quite abruptly, but I enjoyed my time with it.
its a little bit flawed on execution, but there are some good ideas there.
Sights & Sounds
- If you enjoy the art direction of 2017's excellent title Night in the Woods or the more recent Beacon Pines, you're bound to enjoy the look of this game. The characters are all cute little animals in an art style that matches the detail and richness of the environments they reside in
- The music is also really good. Most of it is morose sounding piano, string, and vocal arrangements with some percussion thrown in. In the more hectic moments, the percussion ramps up to pair with the introduction of grimy synth
- In all, presentation isn't where this game fails. It's most of its other aspects that are disappointing
Story & Vibes
- You play the role of Finley, a fresh out of school M.D. who moves from his big city campus to complete his residency at a hospital in the small dying town of Porcupine. The failures of the town and the paucity of its budget have clearly had an impact on the crumbling, outdated hospital. This has initiated a death spiral of disappointing medical outcomes leading to less funding and poorer reputation and, in turn, worse outcomes again to keep situation circling the drain
- It's a sad story, and as a professional in the medical field, I can tell you that it's depressingly common
- The story follows the now-rocky relationship between the town and the hospital through Finley's eyes, culminating in a stressful and gut-wrenching event that will change the town forever. Or maybe not. I couldn't tell you, because the game ends incredibly abruptly.
- In all, Fall of Porcupine is essentially a 5-act play in 3 acts. By that, I don't mean they crammed a classically-structured play into 60% of the expected runtime. I mean that you see the exposition (Act I), rising action (Act II), and the climax (Act III). Then it just ends. No falling action. No denouement. It's just over and you get nothing to tie up the story other than a paltry post-credits sequence that explains nothing
- It's disappointing, because the character development is extremely good. So was the narrative setup. I was so invested in the game up until it ended that the first thought in my head after the shock of seeing the credits roll was: "Why did they do this? To see how well they could tell 3/5 of a story?"
- I suppose the devs may be trying to make a statement with the ending choice, but it ultimately just feels like the game is unfinished. Sure, not everything in life or love gets a tidy bow put on it to let you know it's finished. But come on. Life doesn't just end with tragedy. How we pick ourselves up, heal, and move on is just as important as (if not more important than) the precipitating tragedy and its causes. So even if the point being made is some fickle cynical moral regarding life's unsatisfying endings, this game is still unfinished whether whoever wrote it thinks it is or not
- I don't even care about the vibes anymore because now I'm mad from thinking about the plot again. Doesn't really matter how the game makes you feel if it just angers you in the end
Playability & Replayability
- Fall of Porcupine owes credit to Night in the Woods beyond the artistic references. The perspective and gameplay are less "references" and more "copies"
- You have weird dreams every night, then wake up. You go about the town being sure to talk to everyone (maybe even doing a little platforming in order to find secrets), then settle in for a daily routine that changes the time of day. Afterwards, you choose to hang out with one of two friends, but note that your choice of one precludes hanging out with the other for that evening. There's also minigames
- See? Same. Except the minigames in Fall of Porcupine are worse and full of bugs (see next section). The Mastermind-clone diagnosis minigame felt especially lazy and and had unnecessarily unforgiving requirements. I had to add backpaddle bindings to comfortably play the procedure minigame despite whatever the specifications say about controller and/or Steam Deck compatibility. The rhythm minigame was so sloppy that it made me feel like I was just suggesting inputs with my controller rather than timing button presses
- I wouldn't consider replaying this game unless there were a free update that contained an ending. I certainly wouldn't buy it as DLC with the content-to-dollars ratio of my experience already so weighed against my favor
Overall Impressions & Performance
- This game raised my hopes and dashed them expertly
- The game didn't even play well owing to all the bugs. I got stuck on geometry. I experienced horrible input lag or poor detection on the rhythm minigames (oh, look, something else Night in the Woods has, and has implemented better). I went through two crashes that erased progress between autosaves. Not sure how much that had to do with playing on the Steam Deck, but other reviews suggest I'm not alone in these complaints
- I understand that something being incomplete doesn't make it necessarily bad. Kafka's The Trial and Gogol's Dead Souls were neat books, but they're unfinished because the authors croaked before wrapping them up. If I learn that Fall of Porcupine's writer unfortunately passed away before finishing the story, I'll be happy to change my review, but until then, my opinion is going to remain low
Final Verdict
- 2.5/10. There's parts of a good game under all the mess, but the incompleteness is baffling and makes Fall of Porcupine impossible to recommend
- If you enjoy the art direction of 2017's excellent title Night in the Woods or the more recent Beacon Pines, you're bound to enjoy the look of this game. The characters are all cute little animals in an art style that matches the detail and richness of the environments they reside in
- The music is also really good. Most of it is morose sounding piano, string, and vocal arrangements with some percussion thrown in. In the more hectic moments, the percussion ramps up to pair with the introduction of grimy synth
- In all, presentation isn't where this game fails. It's most of its other aspects that are disappointing
Story & Vibes
- You play the role of Finley, a fresh out of school M.D. who moves from his big city campus to complete his residency at a hospital in the small dying town of Porcupine. The failures of the town and the paucity of its budget have clearly had an impact on the crumbling, outdated hospital. This has initiated a death spiral of disappointing medical outcomes leading to less funding and poorer reputation and, in turn, worse outcomes again to keep situation circling the drain
- It's a sad story, and as a professional in the medical field, I can tell you that it's depressingly common
- The story follows the now-rocky relationship between the town and the hospital through Finley's eyes, culminating in a stressful and gut-wrenching event that will change the town forever. Or maybe not. I couldn't tell you, because the game ends incredibly abruptly.
- In all, Fall of Porcupine is essentially a 5-act play in 3 acts. By that, I don't mean they crammed a classically-structured play into 60% of the expected runtime. I mean that you see the exposition (Act I), rising action (Act II), and the climax (Act III). Then it just ends. No falling action. No denouement. It's just over and you get nothing to tie up the story other than a paltry post-credits sequence that explains nothing
- It's disappointing, because the character development is extremely good. So was the narrative setup. I was so invested in the game up until it ended that the first thought in my head after the shock of seeing the credits roll was: "Why did they do this? To see how well they could tell 3/5 of a story?"
- I suppose the devs may be trying to make a statement with the ending choice, but it ultimately just feels like the game is unfinished. Sure, not everything in life or love gets a tidy bow put on it to let you know it's finished. But come on. Life doesn't just end with tragedy. How we pick ourselves up, heal, and move on is just as important as (if not more important than) the precipitating tragedy and its causes. So even if the point being made is some fickle cynical moral regarding life's unsatisfying endings, this game is still unfinished whether whoever wrote it thinks it is or not
- I don't even care about the vibes anymore because now I'm mad from thinking about the plot again. Doesn't really matter how the game makes you feel if it just angers you in the end
Playability & Replayability
- Fall of Porcupine owes credit to Night in the Woods beyond the artistic references. The perspective and gameplay are less "references" and more "copies"
- You have weird dreams every night, then wake up. You go about the town being sure to talk to everyone (maybe even doing a little platforming in order to find secrets), then settle in for a daily routine that changes the time of day. Afterwards, you choose to hang out with one of two friends, but note that your choice of one precludes hanging out with the other for that evening. There's also minigames
- See? Same. Except the minigames in Fall of Porcupine are worse and full of bugs (see next section). The Mastermind-clone diagnosis minigame felt especially lazy and and had unnecessarily unforgiving requirements. I had to add backpaddle bindings to comfortably play the procedure minigame despite whatever the specifications say about controller and/or Steam Deck compatibility. The rhythm minigame was so sloppy that it made me feel like I was just suggesting inputs with my controller rather than timing button presses
- I wouldn't consider replaying this game unless there were a free update that contained an ending. I certainly wouldn't buy it as DLC with the content-to-dollars ratio of my experience already so weighed against my favor
Overall Impressions & Performance
- This game raised my hopes and dashed them expertly
- The game didn't even play well owing to all the bugs. I got stuck on geometry. I experienced horrible input lag or poor detection on the rhythm minigames (oh, look, something else Night in the Woods has, and has implemented better). I went through two crashes that erased progress between autosaves. Not sure how much that had to do with playing on the Steam Deck, but other reviews suggest I'm not alone in these complaints
- I understand that something being incomplete doesn't make it necessarily bad. Kafka's The Trial and Gogol's Dead Souls were neat books, but they're unfinished because the authors croaked before wrapping them up. If I learn that Fall of Porcupine's writer unfortunately passed away before finishing the story, I'll be happy to change my review, but until then, my opinion is going to remain low
Final Verdict
- 2.5/10. There's parts of a good game under all the mess, but the incompleteness is baffling and makes Fall of Porcupine impossible to recommend
I liked the demo but the bugs in the main game made me put it down. Hopefully, they'll be fixed next time I try to finish it.
Never played, although it does look interesting.
I wasn't sure what to expect from this game, and it still wasn't quite what I was expecting. Tears were wept, but the story did not go where I thought it would? Disappointed.
I spent the majority of the game RELISHING the gorgeous design. The art style is just so so so so nice to look at. The writing came off heartfelt and vulnerable and it made the characters so likeable. They mentioned in the credits that real people lent their stories to the making of this game and I thought that was a really nice touch.
BUT..... An underlying current to the game is that there's a... "thing" that's happening, and a lot of the game seems to build up to the reveal of it. It starts in the demo. But when I got to the end, I was so surprised that that was the conclusion. The credits started rolling and all I could think was wait... that's it? There wasn't much closure at all and post-game I just felt sort of unsatisfied. :( (But then again I'm generally not a fan of open-ish endings anyway.)
In the end, I can see themes of friendship, grief, healing, the fragility of life and corporate greed in the medical world. But the trailer and the demo imply mystery/thriller vibes, a lot like Night in the Woods. I have a feeling that was intentional, maybe because they knew who their audience was going to be. But it didn't live up to that at all.
If you've enjoyed other point-and-click, narrative, Night in the Woods-STYLE games, don't mind tw:illn3s/de@th, and you aren't scared off by a few (sometimes game-stopping) bugs in a game, this game is for you!
Lovely graphics, beautiful soundtrack, wholesome, witty writing with the occasional tear-jerker scene. No mystery or thriller vibes, though. I got about 20 hours of play time out of it, including impromptu soundtrack-induced naps.
I liked it! For me, it just felt something was missing both in the main plot and the conclusion of it.
I spent the majority of the game RELISHING the gorgeous design. The art style is just so so so so nice to look at. The writing came off heartfelt and vulnerable and it made the characters so likeable. They mentioned in the credits that real people lent their stories to the making of this game and I thought that was a really nice touch.
BUT..... An underlying current to the game is that there's a... "thing" that's happening, and a lot of the game seems to build up to the reveal of it. It starts in the demo. But when I got to the end, I was so surprised that that was the conclusion. The credits started rolling and all I could think was wait... that's it? There wasn't much closure at all and post-game I just felt sort of unsatisfied. :( (But then again I'm generally not a fan of open-ish endings anyway.)
In the end, I can see themes of friendship, grief, healing, the fragility of life and corporate greed in the medical world. But the trailer and the demo imply mystery/thriller vibes, a lot like Night in the Woods. I have a feeling that was intentional, maybe because they knew who their audience was going to be. But it didn't live up to that at all.
If you've enjoyed other point-and-click, narrative, Night in the Woods-STYLE games, don't mind tw:illn3s/de@th, and you aren't scared off by a few (sometimes game-stopping) bugs in a game, this game is for you!
Lovely graphics, beautiful soundtrack, wholesome, witty writing with the occasional tear-jerker scene. No mystery or thriller vibes, though. I got about 20 hours of play time out of it, including impromptu soundtrack-induced naps.
I liked it! For me, it just felt something was missing both in the main plot and the conclusion of it.