Pratfall Review (PC)

“If you’re going to do something, do it properly.” Or at least, that’s what I continued to tell myself as I actively (and unapologetically) bombed the living daylights out of an underground cave in search of a lost puppy. The mess was a slight mishap, but the motive was sincere and within reason. I could have spent hours—days, even, digging small amounts of dirt with a trowel. But that never would have gotten me anywhere. No, I had to take it one step further, to the point where things needed to be blown to pieces in order for my objectives to come to fruition. I didn’t have time to procrastinate; I had a job to do, and I had a dog to find.

On the surface, Pratfall sounds like a noble tale about a missing canine and a loyal owner who would give a left leg to keep them safe. But in reality, it’s a little less sentimental. As a digging game at heart, Pratfall invites you to blow the world to smithereens and dig deeper into a procedurally generated cavern—a biome in which bottomless layers obscure hidden secrets, and hazardous terrain poses a risk to your survival. If you fall, you receive serious injuries, and if you fail to illuminate your path with various light sources, you get lost in the dark, and so on and so forth.

Similar to A Game About Digging a Hole, Pratfall is all about harnessing the tools at your disposal to gradually submerge into an enormous underground network of tunnels and unchartered labyrinths. With a trowel and a handful of ineffective digging tools, you find yourself with the monumental task of chipping away at the surface, and making small upgrades to your equipment to help you descend even deeper as time progresses forward. There are bombs, pickaxes, and a whole bunch of pick-me-ups to keep you alive and kicking as you move from anchor point to anchor point. But, that’s Pratfall, in a nutshell: a mining expedition in which you explore vast distances and, either alone or with up to three friends, manipulate the terrain to overcome various traps and obstacles.

While Pratfall can be played alone, the game itself is designed to accommodate four players. As a team, you have the combined power to collaborate on structures, foster reliable relationships, and develop a webbing for whenever someone accidentally falls and becomes the loose baggage of the team. It falls to you, as one of these daring expedition guides, to ensure that the group sticks together, and that everyone upholds a vital role in the mission. It isn’t essential for your success, mind you. Heck, you can even choose to leave someone in the dark and without two sticks to rub together. But that’s besides the point of the game. Or is it?

With three individual procedurally generated biomes to carve through and a good selection of traps and other environmental twists to keep you plugging on, Pratfall provides a solid foundation for an evergreen experience that can keep you busy for long periods of time. It’s still a little barebones and without the full weight of a story-driven campaign, but for what it does offer—a daring descent into the unknown—it has a lot to justify its price tag. It’s niche, but it’s also a game that’s more than likely going to appeal to the target demographic, too.

As far as graphics go, what you see here is what you get: a massive chunk of murky brown space and a small pocket of vibrancy in the character designs. It isn’t a feast for the eyes, and it isn’t a game that holds a candle to most other games of its kind, for that matter. But, given the context, it foots the bill well in this case. It isn’t a classically good-looking game by any stretch, but then, it’s dirt. There isn’t a lot for you to get your hopes up for here, minus perhaps, the traps and other sunken curveballs and what have you. But other than that, Pratfall is more or less what you think it is: a liminal world made up entirely of various browns and greys. Simple, but effective.

As with most games that rely on mindless destruction and aimless free falling, you can definitely expect your fair share of uncoordinated shoddiness in Pratfall. Unlike your average linear experience with A-to-B progression, Pratfall instead chooses to focus on cluttered spaces and unconventional pathways. Of course, it can be as messy as you want it to be. That said, you shouldn’t expect an airtight experience with seamless transitions and graceful landings here. Do, however, expect a chaotic romp through the dirt and a lot of walking around in the dark with no real goal to achieve. You’ll dig, bomb, and occasionally falter on your journey, all in the hopes that “one more scoop” will lead you closer to your trapped canine friend.

Verdict

Pratfall might not harbor the greatest tools for a seemingly endless digging expedition, but with its inclusion of a four-player co-op mode and three distinctly different underground biomes to explore, it does make for an engaging experience, nonetheless. To call it a brilliant game might be an overstatement, as it does fall into a niche category that only a select few will truly appreciate. To that end, I’d say that if you do enjoy games like A Game About Digging a Hole or Backyard Digger, then you’ll probably find something to scrape out of this particular pile of dirt.

Suffice it to say, I wouldn’t expect anything special here. Aside from its occasional coveted treasure or tool upgrade, Pratfall doesn’t offer much more than a brief comical escapade with a few friends. Without a weighty campaign or any real objectives to complete, it’s highly likely that you’ll sweep most of its contents beneath the rug during the initial stages of the dig. Still, if you have the coin to spare and a few friends who you don’t mind wrangling and throwing into the dirt, then I’d suggest taking the plunge into Pratfall for a few hours or so.