User:Buntvogel/sandbox

Fall of Porcupine is a single-player adventure video game. It was developed by the German company Buntspecht.Games. The prototype was published on Steam on August 23. 2021 and was presented to the public at Gamescom 2021.

Plot
The game centers on Porcupine, a fictional provincial town inhabited by zoomorphic people. Finley, the main character, appears in the form of a pigeon. He is a young doctor who experiences his first difficult weeks of work at the Porcupine hospital. Finley loves his job and is on fire for his work, but soon daily grind sets in in the form of stress, overtime and a harsh head doctor who makes life hell not only for Finley, but also for Mia, a shy colleague. Finley befriends her and the stubbornly friendly nurse Karl, with whom he tries to find out whether his life decisions were right during evening talks in the local pub. Finley increasingly doubts himself, his profession and its meaning. Finley's uncertainty is further heightened by the villagers, some of whom accuse the hospital of inconsistencies and incompetence. Finley finds a balance to the stress of everyday life with his best friend Pina. She doesn't take life so hard and shows her friend the Glowmilk Woods, which puts Finley in a wonderful, autumnal, melancholy mood. Here he experiences a moment of peace before he has to return to his hectic professional life, where completely different challenges await him. In the hospital he encounters dark machinations, which he tries to clear up with his friends, but then a much greater misfortune strikes the city.

Gameplay
The player controls Finley, who can walk, jump and glide. Finley can enter into direct dialog with the inhabitants of the city. Sometimes these conversations and their outcome are predetermined, sometimes it is possible to choose between three of Finley's answers, each of which steers the game in a different direction. For example, the player can help a colleague get a snack from the snack machine. If he chooses to do so, he receives information that he can use later in the game. If he doesn't help, he doesn't get any information and he misses out on scenes of the game that he could have otherwise played through. This Fear of missing out on something interesting, is used as the main motivator to make the player take the smartest decisions possible. This is because there are many different paths and options on how the game can go on. The player thus experiences the story in his own way and can decide for himself which characters he wants to deal with more intensively. Sebastian Heße, the developer of the game says: "This is what we want to achieve in the main game, that every player has experienced his or her own version of Fall of Porcupine. (...). There is always a cycle, and depending on which characters you engage with, you learn more about the character or less, (...)." As the game progresses, the player learns more mechanics, such as the use of a cell phone, which allows him to interact with the world in a more complex way. Through the cell phone, Finley is regularly informed about the status of his patients and must treat them. In special cases, small skill games must be completed in order to successfully complete the treatment. The treatment mini-games are to be solved with skill or rhythm, depending on the occasion. Two basic mechanics are established and learned, which subsequently occur regularly in modified form and varying degrees of difficulty.

Development
The game is based on research interviews with hospital employees that reflect everyday life in German hospitals and the real-life problems of the healthcare system. In August 2021, the prototype, entitled Last Days Of Summer, and a trailer for it were released. The prototype includes 13 characters that the player can interact with. There are also 19 walk-through set-pieces, 2 platform passages, and 4 mini-games. The gameplay time is 90 to 120 minutes.

The prototype was funded by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW GmbH and was included in the Indie Arena Booth 2021 by Gamescom. Buntspecht.Games has announced to release the full game in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Reception
Steffi Schlottag from Gamestar compares the look of the game to the very successful story adventure Night in the Woods. She highlights the "warm autumn atmosphere," as well as the "picturesque graphics." GameStar also reminds Fall of Porcupine: "...at first glance, it resembles the story adventure Night in the Woods." Adventure Corner writes of the game, "It also relies on a very pleasant mood with warm colors and cozy music. A cup of tea goes perfectly with it." The article concludes, "Atmospherically, there's a lot right here!" PC Games Insider writes about the realistic decisions required by the game, which can also have significance for life outside of the game: "this is a game all about examining both Finley's life, and the lives we lead outside of the game. If you were Finley, what would you do? And what would you consider the most important decisions and the healthiest work-life balance?"

At the Big Indie Pitch at Gamescom 2021, the game came in third place.