Fall of Porcupine follows the story of a new doctor named Finley at the underfunded St. Ursula’s Hospital in the small town of Porcupine, inhabited only by anthropomorphic animals.  The demo took me about 1.5 hours to complete, and in that time, I mainly focused on treating three patients, hanging out with fellow coworkers Karl (a longtime nurse) and Mia (another new doctor), and hiking in the woods with Finley’s florist friend, Pina.  The game is very heavy on dialogue, but is also interspersed with minigames/puzzles, which ranged from fun to horrible.

Again, this game is very story-focused, so there is a lot of reading.  Fortunately, I did enjoy the dialogue and found it rather well-written and the characters interesting.  Finley was especially charming, considering his penchant for having conversations with inanimate objects.  Obviously, if you’re looking for a game with a higher emphasis on gameplay, then this is most certainly not the game for you.  But if that doesn’t deter you, then it’s possible the minigames will.

Honestly, I didn’t mind several of the puzzles and minigames present in the demo.  One revolved around a game where you count, but replace all numbers containing, or divisible by, 3 or 7 with the word “Bums”.  For some reason.  It’s not the most interesting minigame, but at least I’ve never seen it before.  Same goes for a puzzle where you need to put the correct symbols in the correct order.  If it’s green, it’s correct, but if you see a blue tally, then you know that a symbol is correct, just in the wrong place.  There was also one battle, but the buttons seemed unresponsive, and I was unable to ever land a single hit.  Luckily, winning was not required.

There is one minigame, however, that is simply terrible.  You must press the buttons shown all at the same time, and they give you button combinations that are not even possible to press without more than two hands.  (People playing on the PC with a keyboard, and Switch users, reported the same struggles.)  And to make matters worse, when they wanted me to tilt the control sticks, the game would often not register that I had done anything, and I would have to fiddle with them until the game acknowledged I was doing anything.  Fortunately, as was also the case with the battle, you don’t need to be good at these minigames.  So even if you fail, you just get a bad grade, and the game proceeds.

But the most important question when finishing a demo is: is the game worth buying?  Well, I often check out reviews made by those who completed the game, and these have discouraged me from playing the full game myself.  People say the game has visual bugs and is laggy and can even freeze or crash.  They also said the story is rather slow until the end, when things move quickly, and nothing is resolved in a satisfactory way.  In general, everyone is recommending a similar game called Night in the Woods, which I can’t say I know much about, but apparently the story is better and the gameplay more interesting.

Fall of Porcupine had potential.  Again, I liked the characters and the writing, and I found the graphics to be simple, but pleasant to look at.  Aside from the minigame requiring me to grow an extra hand, these little diversions were fun and unique enough, as well.  The game sounds like it could have had an interesting story following the life of this new doctor working at a somewhat dilapidated hospital, doing his best to treat his patients despite the lack of proper funding.  The demo even ended on a cliffhanger, intriguing me even more.  I’m just not sure if I’m in the mood for a game with so much emphasis on dialogue, especially if all that dialogue isn’t going to culminate in a satisfying ending.  Plus, I don’t want to have to keep tolerating a minigame that seems unbeatable, even if how well I perform seems to have no impact.

Fall of Porcupine spans 7-17 hours, depending on how in-depth your playthrough is, and is available on all major consoles for $19.99, though I’ve seen it go on sale for $9.99.  Though, based on the game’s poor reviews, many are recommending Night in the Woods instead, which sells for the same price, lasts 9-25 hours, and is also just as easily available.