14 DAY TRIAL // 
Finley is just a doctor in training but this way of diagnosing a disease feels weird even in this animal fantasy world. The patient isn’t directly talking about symptoms but I’m able to play a mini-game centered on guessing images. When I match all of them correctly, the game signals I’ve done a good job and shows me there’s one more room with an ailing creature to visit.
Soon I’m done with the shift and ready to head home. I talk to a few colleagues on my way out of the hospital, thinking about my weird dreams and something I recently saw in the woods. Finley walks the long way around and takes a quick look at the schoolyard, where I’ve recently won a game of basketball, and the town’s only pub.
This quiet animal town is filled with people working extra hard to be nice to the newcomer. And the character I control needs all the help he can get, considering his undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Dissorder and his threatening dreams. But Finley is also starting to notice that the carefully built facade of helpfulness might be needed to keep outsiders occupied and unable to investigate the darker corners of this place.
Fall of Porcupine is developed by Critical Rabbit and published by Assemble Entertainment. I played it on the PC via Steam. The game is also offered on the Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X and S, and older consoles from Microsoft and Sony. The title mixes exploration, conversations, and medical procedures to create an interesting narrative with some great characters.
The hero of this story is Finley, a junior doctor bird who has just moved to the town of Porcupine to work at the St. Ursula hospital. He suffers a weird accident, shown in the intro sequence that takes place in a dream, and then returns to his regular routine of working at the hospital, interacting with the town’s characters, and thinking about his own life and future.
The game’s universe has real-world elements like medical care, buses, and pubs, but everyone here is an animal. The head nurse is a ram, a tortoise is managing the bar while his mother is a patient, a pair of young bucks always causes trouble, and plenty of others are ready to interact with our hero. Conversations are sometimes silly and sometimes profound, well-written to showcase the personalities of those involved and the general feeling of light nostalgia that the entire town is feeling as autumn is settling in.
The choice to make everyone a type of animal is a good one, adding a little bit of the uncanny to the experience. It also ensures players pay attention when some weird things start happening and push the narrative in a new direction. I like the way the story unfolds, although I found the pacing a bit slow.
Fall of Porcupine tries to translate medical work into gameplay mechanics and succeeds, in part. Finley‘s hospital uses an app to deliver tasks and players will move their character from patient to patient, briefly chatting to each before executing a specific procedure presented as a mini-game. The game offers a brief presentation of each the first time and neither is very complex.
Prescribing medicine involves using color-coded pills to balance a patient’s vital signs. An injection requires players to find the spot to put the needle in and then push the plunger the exact right amount. Some other procedures move into straight-up Quick Time Event territory, which makes them a little more tedious. Gamers get scored on their performance each day and will also have to deal with other random emergencies during shifts.
A few more traditional puzzles pop up from time to time. There are a few pretty classic platforming mechanics with some limited environmental interactions. Finley and his buddies get into a fight and the game introduces simple turn-based combat elements. It’s fun to see how the game constantly shifts to make sure players have a variety of things to do, even if some of these ideas don’t have much depth.
Fall of Porcupine’s characters and stories are its biggest asset. Talk to everyone and try to listen to every story. The game comments on plenty of real-world problems, including overwork for medical personnel and the struggle to balance a promising career with personal time. The developers have also managed to sneak in enough humor to ensure conversations never feel like lectures.
The situational mini-games are serviceable. The medical side can become rote after a few days, which in itself might be a commentary on the pressure of constantly performing well in a job. The game also needs to make it easier for players to move through the world, especially when the local buses are not running. Walking everywhere can become annoying, especially when taking into account the many screen transitions between some locations.
Fall of Porcupine uses a pretty classic adventure game 2D view while creating a charming world. All characters Finley can interact with have well-developed visual identities with a lot of nice small details that hint at their jobs and personalities. The town is less interesting and really needed to have more statues and lookout points.
The characters are not voiced, which offers players space to imagine how each animal might sound, but the sound design does make the town itself feel alive. The title’s soundtrack remains mostly in the background, underlining the many emotions the characters express while also delivering more bouncy notes to accompany Finley during work.
The Good
- Small town with animal character universe
- Solid narrative
- Decent medical mini-games
The Bad
- Mini-games become repetitive
- Some pacing issues
- On-foot travel is annoying
Conclusion
The medical-focused mechanics are also pretty charming at first when the player is healing a tortoise by playing a short rhythm game. Their increasing variety is not enough to keep them engaged as players experience new days in the town. Fall of Porcupine offers an original take on the narrative adventure genre and has enough cool character moments to compensate for the repetitive gameplay.
A review key was provided by the publisher
