kinda wild that a game about how institutional mismanagement sabotages the work of the boots-on-the-ground, outward facing workers kinda also plays like that was the case in the game itself!

the people who were involved in the most strictly artistic elements of the game = innocent. the music was phenomenal, the painted landscapes stunning, the character designs expressive and unique, and the writing largely pretty good. this game has some great pieces and a lot of heart

too bad about the rest of it though.

I waited several months after the game's release to buy it, due to how many comments I saw about its volume of bugs. the game does not play like they were cleaned up

and this specifically a shame because a game like this hinges so well on its cultivation of ambience, of getting the player into a certain mindset. a mindset that, in practice, gets punctured every time a dialogue bubble fails to launch, or launches in the wrong spot, or a character appears in a wrong spot separate from their dialogue bubble, or—

and even beyond the strict bugs, the gameplay is deeply misaligned with its story, design, and a logical play style. the exploration is hindered by inconsistently appearing invisible walls and totally unexplained, almost completely barren locales. the platforming is rendered largely moot by porcupine's very flat, almost suburban layout and long stretches of empty nothing. the choosing between two people to hang out with is pulled, like almost everything, from the game's clear inspiration in the night in the woods, but those choices don't connect with narrative at all. they seem to exist not because they meaningfully serve the game, but because night in the woods had it (see also, the aforementioned misapplied platforming and 'exploration')

the minigame mechanics are, at least on the switch, very poorly implemented. the guitar hero minigame doesn't register inputs in-game correctly (and this is not a hardware problem—the game visually imply a registered input without actually registering it). very frustrating that patients' lives depend on these minigames. please use the accessibility options if you can.

side characters appear and vanish not in a way the feels consistent with the story, but like they got forgotten in a rush to meet a deadline. many relationships do feel earned, but almost just as many don't. the game plays like there was a lot more intended, but it missing. you can see the missing shapes in all the empty space

sigh. it's a bummer, because when it's good, it's really charming, and it tries to tell a story that I think is very specific and meaningful. but most of it gets loss in the mess of it all