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Fall of Porcupine: Last Days of Summer Demo Impressions

Fall of Porcupine: Last Days of Summer is a prologue to the 2D story adventure Fall of Porcupine. The demo is free to download from the EU eShop and takes approximately one hour to complete. This original story is set in the same world as the Fall of Porcupine.

Ending on a dramatic cliffhanger, Fall of Porcupine: Last Days of Summer kept me hooked throughout the entire narrative and made me desire more.

Last Days of Summer

In the small town of Porcupine, Finley, an intern doctor at St. Ursula’s hospital (and a pigeon), discovers the joys and hardships of working in the healthcare industry. The prologue introduces the townsfolk of Porcupine that Finley interacts with, as well as the unique staff members of the hospital. Finley is about to discover that Porcupine is full of mysteries, and not all is as it seems in this sleepy town.

<Fall of Porcupine: Last Days of Summer> LadiesGamers.com [Porcupine promo]
Porcupine: city of silence or city of mystery?

A Quirky and Unique Cast

Porcupine is full of wonderfully unique and quirky characters. I especially enjoyed interacting with the hospital staff and patients. They all had witty dialogues with a dose of sarcasm thrown in. Even though Finley is empathetic and hardworking, his friends and hospital staff think of him as lazy and not doing a good job as a doctor. But Finley brushes off the mean and sometimes sarcastic comments and continues to try his best for his patients.

Being underappreciated is something all healthcare professionals face in this demanding profession, so what Finley experiences are realistic and accurate. I have the utmost respect for healthcare professionals knowing how gruelling their work is, so Finley is my favourite character.

<Fall of Porcupine: Last Days of Summer> LadiesGamers.com [In front of the storage room]
A witty conversation.
<Fall of Porcupine: Last Days of Summer> LadiesGamers.com [Finley with the other doctors]
It’s tough being a doctor.

A Beautiful Hand-drawn Narrative

The hand-drawn artwork is wonderful and really adds a nice touch to the story. The visuals are subtle but not too simple. I really like the colour choices and aesthetics of the town of Porcupine. Autumn is one of the best seasons, and the graphics highlight the city’s beauty of fall.

<Fall of Porcupine: Last Days of Summer> LadiesGamers.com [At the ruins]
Aren’t the ruins majestic?

Gameplay and Controls

The game plays out in a visual novel style in which the dialogue choices can influence your relationships with the characters. There is also a brawl in a bar that you can control by timing your punches and defending at the right time. When treating your patients, you play mini-games by pressing buttons on the gamepad or guessing symbols determining your diagnosis grade. The mini-games are quite tricky, especially the pressing buttons one, as you need to press and hold down various buttons at once, giving my fingers quite a workout!

The game is single-player, and there is a very short tutorial at the beginning that teaches you how to move Finley around. He can jump over obstacles and even glide a bit in the air.

<Fall of Porcupine: Last Days of Summer> LadiesGamers.com [In the bar]
Enjoying some beer after work.
The best scene involves after-work socializing at the local bar. Finley and his friends talk about their day and the stresses of working at the hospital when Karl, the old codger, challenges them to a game of Bums! Bums is a counting game in which the player cannot count a number ending in 3 or 7 or is divisible by 3 and 7. This game tested my logic skills, but it was fun, and I played it until I beat Karl.

Mysteries to Uncover

The hospital’s fifth floor is an abandoned section that is in disrepair due to structural issues. Finley has to investigate the abandoned ward to find a missing patient. It was pretty creepy as there was no music playing in the background, and there were creaking noises. I won’t tell you what happened on the fifth floor as that will spoil the prologue’s ending, but I can say that it was a surprising cliffhanger.

Final Thoughts

Fall of Porcupine: Last Days of Summer is a great addition to the visual novel genre, and I can tell the developers put a lot of love into the game. The prologue is perfect in every way, and the only cons are the tricky mini-games. I can’t wait to play the full release of Fall of Porcupine coming out later this year, and I recommend it to everyone. There is just so much to love about this game.

 

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