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Playstation game moving blue blocks2/1/2024 ![]() And yet, it’s probably the most serious puzzle game I’ve played in years. I don’t think Humanity wants us to take it seriously. Which is the right path, which is the wrong? How many games promote that kind of behaviour, ey? These days, it’s all about engagement in video games – but Humanity wants to get in your head, not just your wallet. ![]() Take a break, have a breather, come back. The puzzles are designed in such a way that, often, walking away and coming back will unclog your neural pathways and allow you to make better sense of the labyrinthine collection of souls and neo-brutalist walkways. Instead, Humanity wants to be masticated – chewed on and savoured for hours, days, weeks, months. Reviewing this game was tricky, for that reason: I couldn’t just summon my ADHD superpower and hyperfocus my way through this in 20 hours. A beguiling brainteaser of a game designed to be enjoyed like a big book of crossword puzzles, not a TV box set you should sit and binge in one go. It’s part Sixth Form philosophical musing, part 3D Lemmings for the PS5 era. Whatever the hell is going on in this game. You, in your Shiba-Inu guise, need to funnel these faceless drones through life – helping them avoid pitfalls and save their souls from…. I think my favourite thing about Humanity is what it implies about our feckless race: that we’re a stubborn, blinkered mass of wandering idiots that’s too stupid or obstinate to travel the roads we need to walk without guidance. I'd like to hear what Alain de Botton has to say about this. But you’re never really sure how to get there. At almost all times, you can see your goal. It’s puzzle-lover catnip, an opiate for your wrangling of the masses. And have to start assembling again, from scratch. By the time you feel barely competent as a guru-like spirit dog from the heavens, you’re carrying around so many blocks you don’t know if you’re going to be able to hold on if another one is given to you. Or swim, off the grid-like path that has made sense so far. Or have them push massive bits of scenery. But that’s not enough – you need more! So let’s split the humans into halves. Then you’re given more blocks: jump, jump again, do a different kind of jump. Initially, the building blocks are simple: you can move the stream of people left, right, up, down. Like all good puzzles, the true beauty of Humanity is in its blocks. They can die, all life is expendable, but as long as a certain quota reaches the goal, well done. You need to shepherd the endless mass of people through architecturally impossible – but very aesthetically pleasing – levels. If you get yourself in the mindset of Tetris Effect (another game from publisher Enhance), but maybe with a smidgen of Pikmin, and you’ll have a vague foundation for what Humanity is trying to do. It doesn’t try to do a lot, but it succeeds in everything it does. It’s a baffling mix of weird, wonderful, simple, and obtuse. But it’s more like Kafka by way of Lemmings, The Beatles’ 1968 film The Yellow Submarine, and Takeshi’s Castle. Watch this trailer and tell me that this is just a normal game, an innocent game.
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