Fall of Porcupine Review (acorncap)
Honestly, this game proved to be a bit of a letdown, and I'm still kind of bummed about it. The concept is really strong, and had me pretty excited- I think there's a lot of meat to the idea of playing a doctor in a small town and the experience of taking care of these people you have to live with, and this game provided shockingly little of that. I wanted to enjoy exploring the town and getting to know the people, but it wound up being shockingly empty, day after day, I would get up, go out, run around town looking for anyone to talk to, any side quest to fulfill, and for the most part it just. Wasn't there. I couldn't even regularly check up on the 'friends' I wanted to build relationships with. Often times I would find myself inexplicably locked out of parts of the town on random days, presumably because there was nothing there for me to do. Platforming elements stop abruptly at the exact moment they stopped being useful, there is a single brief set of rooftops that you can run across, right up until you find the homeless walrus' missing hat for one of the few scant optional side quests in the game, and after that point it cuts out entirely, and you get dropped back on the street. With one exception, the only people you can talk to are tied directly to achievements, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it does show just how very utilitarian the construction of this game was. Really, it just felt like the game was almost punishing me for wanting to be invested in this little town, or surprised that I would want that at all.
The writing was also very substandard, and extremely overwrought. There's an attempt to make you bond with Finley through his commentary on the world around him, but his jokes have an element of forced whimsy, and tend to far overstay their welcome. It feels like standing in a room with your friend, who's a nice enough guy, but instead of accepting he's told a joke that didn't quite land, keeps digging the hole deeper, drilling the joke down until it's awkward for the both of you. There are also some truly baffling worldbuilding decisions that are brought up and then immediately dropped, such as the forest of little statues. It's one of the few bits of worldbuilding we get, and as much as I want to enjoy it, it does strike me as kind of baffling that this is a world where I guess cemeteries don't exist, so this one town felt the need to populate a local forest with wooden gnome representations of their lost love ones. Otherwise, cemeteries do exist but I guess no one likes to visit them? It's unclear.
The biggest problem with the writing however, is the characters, who end up being either wildly lifeless or profoundly unlikable, even when you are allowed to speak to them more than once. Even the attempts to make certain characters more likable only drill in just how kind of awful they are. Karl suffers the most from this, as a character whose arc involves making what seems like every wrong decision and ruining as many lives as he saves. But the narrative seems to want to frame him as being actually correct and reasonable in everything he does? You as a player aren't even allowed to say you disagree with him or think he's out of line, your only option is to agree with him at every turn.
The last arc of the game also comes completely out of nowhere. If you dig hard and scrape together what little lore and information is available to you, you can piece together a theory that's almost interesting, but the game doesn't offer you any explanation. Just suddenly there's an epidemic and everyone in town is on the verge of dropping dead, with no explanation as to why. Maybe they were going for realism there, but it felt wildly out of place.
And then, as many have said, the game ends so, so abruptly. It feels like there was a whole scene left on the cutting room floor, you don't even learn what happens to anyone except a character you've spoken to twice, and probably don't care about.
I know a lot of people have said it, but I wanted to like this game. I wanted to like it so badly, as someone who loves quiet little narratives, who loves small town stories, who loves investing herself in the world of a game and enjoys digging out as many secrets as she can find. And part of me is still stuck here, trying to plug up the holes and figure out what else it needs to be fixed, but that's part of the problem. I should not be thinking more about the structural failings of a game and what it's lacking than what is actually there to be experienced.