Is it weird that my first thought upon playing Fall of Porcupine was an episode of Night Court? Forgive me for deciding to start of this review by reminiscing about a 1980s sitcom, but there’s this one Season 8 episode, “Death Takes a Halloween,” that stands out. It’s a Halloween episode where someone claiming to be the Spirit of Death (at least for lower Manhattan) is brought into the court on an assault charge. Everyone naturally believes that the guy is crazy, but then when nobody seems to be dying all of a sudden after the man is put into holding (in 1980s New York, no less), including one person who jumped off a skyscraper, everybody begins freaking out.
It might be weird to say that Night Court has anything in common with indie games such asSpiritfarer,but it was a sitcom that always found a way to take a lot of silly concepts, ideas and characters, and then find the genuine tragedy, heart and emotion behind all of these people. In this case, it’s revealed later on that the “Grim Reaper” here is actually a doctor, one who ended up having a breakdown after being surrounded by seeing so much pain and suffering, seeing patients die on him, seeing death as an inevitability, and it became too much for him to take in. Granted, none of that really explains the whole “nobody’s dying” part of the plot, but it’s a heart-tugging scenes that serves of reminder of what even the most dedicated healthcare professionals have to face every day. And that’s where Fall of Porcupine comes in.
Fall of Porcupine sees you playing as Finley, a relatively new resident in the small town of Porcupine, and a Junior Doctor over at St. Ursula Hospital. Thing haven’t been the best for them recently, having just recovered from an accident involving a patient that no one seems to know the details about, and now they find themselves heading back to work. Unfortunately, they then learn that something may be wrong with the hospital, and that there’s something mysterious about a now-abandoned ward, and there’s also the regular assortment of patient with different maladies to deal with, all on top of that, which can potentially take a turn for the worse.
Gameplay-wise, Fall of Porcupine is a 2D side-scrolling graphic adventure game where you you travel around and explore a quaint small town during that fall season that’s full of colorful anthropomorphic animals where you may leap around on bits of scenery and talk with a ton of the locals. As you progress, you’ll end up engaging with everyone through various mini-games, which include Guitar Hero-style rhythm section, and after each significant work section, there are occasional moments where you select one of two major friends to hang out and with, one of whom is a little more wilder than…actually, the more I type this out, the more I realize the gameplay can just be summed up with “it’s likeNight in the Woods.”
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, mind you. A similar gameplay formula still works well in Fall of Porcupine, and here incorporating the mini-games into Finley’s daily shifts actually works well. Each day, you’re given three patients to check in on, performing such tasks such as diagnosing symptoms, dressing wounds and figuring out necessary medication doses, which you are then graded on. These take the forms of various puzzles games or games of dexterity, and with the possible exception of the game where you administer a shot (which always felt vague when it came to figuring out what to do), they’re all still fun, allowing for challenging shifts.
The meat in a game like Fall of Porcupine lies within its story, though, and the game succeeds in that area. It helps that the various hospital staff members and the other residents of Porcupine have rather colorful personalities, and so Finley gets in a lot of good dialogue with them. Things get even more interesting when we start learning more about Porcupine’s traditions and history, as well as that of St. Ursula Hospital. Of course, then there’s the interactions between Finley and the patients they treat, which includes lot of well-crafted medical drama stuff which, without spoiling anything, doesn’t shy away from aiming for the feels, and credit to developers Critical Rabbit for clearly putting in a lot of work when it comes to depicting the troubles faced by every worker in a hospital, down to even those working seemingly insignificant jobs.
The vibrant, playful style all through Fall of Porcupine also gives everything a terrific look, nicely contrasting some of the subject matter, and accompanied by a nice soundtrack that perfectly sets the mood. Each stylized character looks impressive, and there was a ton of attention given to crafting Porcupine’s small-town charms…which can make it aggravating when exploring it can actually be one one the game’s letdowns. Sometimes, the game seems vague on whether you can or can’t explore different areas. In particular, there’s the hospital, where it makes a deal how you can take the stairwell to go to any floor, or you can just use to elevator to go to the story-relevant floor. Except then when using the stairwell, rarely was I allowed to actually access any floors other than the relevant one, so what was the point (the same goes for the town’s occasionally-working bus stops)?
It also doesn’t help that a chunk of Fall of Porcupine feels either buggy or poorly structured. There were moments of obvious clipping, parts where the font size was too big, characters speaking off-camera that clearly forgot to move into frame, and similar bits, which make up the occasional glitch. But then there are more awkward moments where it seems like the game either skips or forgets about certain plot details. There’s one part where Finley encounters a mysterious trailer on the side of the road for a few days, wonders what the heck it could be, and then suddenly one day it’s a coffee shop, and Finley has no reaction. In one other instance, Finley talks with another character we’ve never seen them interact with as if they’ve already known them, and then during a hospital section later, they’re both meeting for the first time? All of this just creates an awkward feeling, as if the game wanted to be accessible to those who wanted either a linear or more open experience, but had trouble balancing the two.
In the end, though, as the credits rolled, Fall of Porcupine still earns a recommendation for its narrative, showcasing the impact that be dealt to health care workers and how they deal with it over time. For all its faults, it’s still a fun adventure that still serves up a great story of a young doctor, and made Porcupine feel like a cozy place to possibly enjoy again.
Closing Comments:
White it ends up stumbling in a few areas and can use a patch or two, Fall of Porcupine still succeeds when it comes to delivering an enjoyable story that sheds light on all sorts of struggles that health care workers face, while still providing several doses of fun gameplay and a nice town filled with interesting and unique characters to interact with. It isn’t exactly something that’s on the level of a miracle cure, but if you’re looking for a good, quick graphic adventure game, it has what will ail you.
Fall of Porcupine
