Panic Porcupine

  This was originally posted on the 30th of June, 2023, in this Twitter thread.

HOF Studious (The Console Version's Publisher) | Steam | Itch | Epic Games |

(Side note: I'm used to little to nobody liking my posts, but seeing the only 2 that liked my original post be the developer, and one of the publishers, felt pretty weird.)

This game kinda reminds me of what I like about Sonic 1, in the sense that it's a momentum based platformer that happens to let you run fast, as opposed to other Sonic games which I feel are speed based platformers that happen to have momentum physics.

I imagine that what I just said is probably a pretty horrible way to sell most people on Panic Porcupine, but I love Sonic 1, and I thought this game had some similar strengths.

I would ironically make the comparison "It's the Super Meat Boy of Sonic The Hedgehog games!" but the game's Steam page is already pretty open about that.

I think the dev(s) (I have no idea how many people worked on this game because I was on my phone while the credits were playing) (Edit: There are indeed multiple people that worked on this game) nailed the momentum and overall game feel.

I think they also did a pretty good job with the level design. On paper, a lot of the level assets and gimmicks aren't anything super groundbreaking, but they were used in tons of really creative ways, giving every level a lot of identity.

I was kinda surprised at how well the camera works. Rather than it panning towards the direction you're facing, it instead tries to always pan forwards in relation to the levels themselves(It's a lot like how a lot of 3D platforms tend to work now that I think about it). It's also just really zoomed out, which I liked. In spite of the camera, there's some moments where the game expects you to just blindly go really fast. As a way to be cautious, I would always try to slow down in those kinds of situations, although sometimes that would actually screw me over.

There were a couple of bugs and performance issues. Most notably were the 2 times were I just fell through floors. And then there was this one time in which I accidentally tricked the game into giving me back all the Chickabirbs that I had collected before resetting the level.

There were a couple of bugs and performance issues. Most notably were the 2 times were I just fell through floors.

And then there was this one time in which I accidentally tricked the game into giving me back all the Chickabirbs that I had collected before resetting the level.

(Notice the counter in the top left that randomly jumps from 0/30 to 29/30)

One thing that annoyed me was that the retry button isn't instant. Sure, the rewind effect is cool, but it just got on my nerves after a while. Also, rather than skipping the death animation, the reset animation just waits for it to finish.

My least favorite part of the game is when you have to wait for different stage elements' cycles to line up.

Last thought, the story was funny I guess.

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