Fall of Porcupine was provided by Assemble Entertainment for review. Thank you!
Fall of Porcupine is a 2D story-driven adventure taking place in the rural town of Porcupine. As Finley, you are a junior doctor on your way to join the team of the St. Ursula's Hospital, but soon, you will realize that nothing is as it seems. Get to know the citizens of this small town and discover the stories behind each person, treat them, and uncover the secrets they are hiding. Choose your answers to influence your relationships and participate in mini-games to treat patients, all while discovering the social injustice afoot.
Seeing this game on Steam, I immediately thought of Night in the Woods. While the art styles and devs are a bit different, there are some distinct similarities visually and the way stories are told, and honestly, I loved it. The characters are fantastic and the story sucked me in, which is fantastic. I also enjoyed that this revolved around the healthcare system and showcased some of the hardships workers in this field have to go through. Pair it with the music and this is definitely a great story to experience...until the ending.
Up until the last act, Fall of Porcupine's story is fantastic and completely sucked me in. But, as the ending was nearing, the story started to feel really rushed. I won't go into it as I don't want to spoil for those who decide to play, but I wanted a bit more answers. This could have been the intention of the ending to be so abrupt, but I personally didn't like it. I did encounter a couple bugs here and there, including a spot where I was floating in the air randomly, but nothing that broke my experience.
Regardless of all of this, I am happy to say that playing this on the Steam Deck will be extremely easy to do with almost no changes needed to play!
Fall of Porcupine needs no in-game changes to run and run extremely well, but to get it to run well, you will need to force a specific version of Proton. For this game, you will need to get and force Proton GE, a community-based fork of Proton that contains some fixes that Valve hasn't or can't implement.
We won't go much more into detail about it, but we do have a full guide that goes over what Proton GE is, how to get it, and how to update it. Whichever the newest version is should work with Fall of Porcupine, and at the time of writing Wthis, it is 8-6. Once this is forced, the game will run flawlessly, draining only 7W - 9W for a 5 hour battery life and keeping a stable 60 FPS.
Fall of Porcupine doesn't have cloud saves, but it does support 16:10 resolutions (so no black bars) and has full controller support. Both of these help make sure the game is a great experience on the Deck!
Fall of Porcupine is an excellent story game that has a strong start and middle, but speeds up a little too much towards the end, culminating in an ending that felt like it was missing something. Regardless, the tale was a worthwhile one, shining a spotlight on the healthcare system and its troubles. Thanks to Proton GE, it runs smooth as butter on the Steam Deck and you will have no problems playing, as long as the right Proton layer is installed.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Fall of Porcupine is a 2D story-driven adventure that can run exceptionally well on the Steam Deck, but needs one tweak to do it.
