Fall of Porcupine

Fall of Porcupine is a side-scrolling adventure game with platform game elements, focusing on the storyline, exploration of the colourful, eponymous town and development of the characters. The game was developed by an independent German studio BUNTSPECHT.GAMES. Before the release of the full version, its over an hour demo - Fall of Porcupine: Last Days of Summer - appeared on the Steam platform.

Plot

Autumn has just arrived in Porcupine, heralding the upcoming and eagerly awaited Hibernation Festival. A new doctor, Finley, has also recently moved here and decided to take up a job at the local St Ursula hospital. He is only working there for the second week and is keen to make the best impression on his senior colleagues. Unfortunately, his bus driver finishes his route early this time, so the protagonist arrives late. On the ground floor, he meets the first character, the receptionist Ingrid, and when he arrives at the duty station, the internist Mia and his superior Dr Krokowski. Wanting to erase the bad impression caused by his lateness, Finley tries his best to perform his tasks. After an intense day's work, he is sent home to rest up for the night's duty. Instead, however, he ends up in a bar, and the next day is dragged out by his friend on a trip. Nevertheless, he arrives at the hospital on time and eagerly starts his work.

Initially, the night shift goes without any major complications. Finley visits his patients, inquiring about their well-being, consulting on their symptoms and carrying out procedures. But things change when one of the patients, the dementia-stricken Mr Arndes, suddenly disappears.

Mechanics

Fall of Porcupine is a mix of platform and adventure game, and may remind of another game of this type - Night in the Woods. Apart from the exploration of colourful terrains, collecting items and establishing dialogues with other characters, there are also sequences with overcoming obstacles, solving time-limited arcade minigames or puzzles, and even duelling with other characters.

During the game we meet on our way many different characters. With some of them we can have casual conversations, but our interaction does not contribute much to the story. However, with more important characters we sometimes get a few dialogue options. For example, if we have a conversation with a patient, we can try them all, starting with more general topics and then moving on to the core of the visit. At other times, however, the situation allows us to choose only one issue, which may affect the further development of the story.

Although the game is largely focused on the story thread, the player is sometimes faced with numerous challenges. First of all, the main character, whom we have to impersonate, is primarily a doctor. So in the production there are a lot of sequences in which we have to take care of our patients. Examinations and treatments are presented in the form of mini-games. One of them is a time trial, in which we have to press and hold the appropriate buttons displayed on the screen. For the correct execution of the task we are given a mark (the better the reflex, the higher the mark) and the patient icon visible at the top of the screen turns green. The next task is to correctly guess the symptoms of the disease. When one of the available icons is placed in the right place on the diagram, it changes colour into green. We have a total of 8 chances to put the symbols in the right order.

Mini games also appear at other stages of the game. Sometimes they take the form of innocent rivalry, which can change the dialogues between characters, and other times they turn into a classic killing spree. The latter is taken from fighting games, which feature life bars, attack, defence and the ability to land a special blow.

Technical aspects

Fall of Porcupine is a side-scroller, whose 2D graphics is kept in vivid and pleasant to the eye colours. Max Beindorf is responsible for the illustrations and character designs. A varied soundtrack with the theme song "U bloom still" adds to the charm of the whole game.