Fall of Porcupine Review

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 16h?
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 2
Is there a good guide available: No, not yet
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, many missable achievements
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No you can use the accessibility settings and still unlock the achievements
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: Maybe the one about wirting the comic? Read more around the end of this review for more info.

Fall of Porcupine is a story-driven adventure game. You play as Finley, a junior doctor that recently moved to a small town called Porcupine for his new job. You’ll meet the people that live in Porcupine, make friends, and work in the hospital. Treating your patients and some of the sidequests requires you to complete some mini-games. Most of them are fine and can be made easier through the accessibility setting in the menu… however, I have no idea how to get a good score in the mini-game for listening to someone’s heart/longs. I sucked so so bad at those already at the beginning, let alone later on in the game when it gets harder.

The game will warn you at the start of a new game that it deals with heavy subjects. This is very true and if you’re sensible about those things, you might want to play this game later or decide it is not for you. As the story is very touching and emotional. It gives a look inside the life of somebody who is working in a hospital, bringing their best A game, but still failing from time to time. Especially around the end of the game, it made me think of healthcare workers during the pandemic.

The game had a few bugs while I played through it, nothing really game-breaking but sometimes I could talk to people and then the conversation didn’t start. Or was working on a quest but something else was listed at the top as a quest I should be working on. Having objectives at the top of the screen is also an accessibility option, but sometimes it was not accurate of what I should be doing.

Another thing that brings the fun of playing Fall of Porcupine down a bit is that a lot of things feel long and slowed down. Rooms are long and most of the time patients lay at the end of the room, streets are long with not much to do in them, which makes them feel long. And since you move a lot through rooms/corridors and streets, it feels like this endless slug that becomes boring very soon. It ramps up the game time while not adding much to the game or the story. The surroundings are beautiful, but not when seeing them for the 5th time.

Then the achievements… normally I make sure I can tell you all about them and have unlocked everything myself. However, in this case, I have only unlocked a little over 60%. I haven’t unlocked everything as there are key moments in the story where you have to choose between option A and option B and both are tied to achievements, so you have to play at least twice through the game. There is one achievement about writing a comic with one of the characters but maybe I didn’t visit him enough, but randomly in the story he started talking again about wanting to write a story and started the questline from the start, which didn’t give me enough time to get through it before the ending, not sure if I would have otherwise. There are also achievements that I have no idea how to unlock, as Emma never talked about a book and I have no clue where I should have heard the mysterious voices. Not having a clue about those 2 achievements and encountering a bug with the comic book storyline made that I didn’t play through the game a second time.

I did enjoy Fall of Porcupine, and I highly recommend it for the story. As it was so touching and emotional. However, the game felt unnecessarily long and can feel like a slog to get through. Around the end, the story gets way more interesting and that feeling of it being a slog faded away.

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