Developed By : No Brakes Games Published By : Curve Digital
Category: Platformer
Release Date : Dec 07, 2017

My first encounter with this game actually came a couple of months ago, while watching one of my streamer friends. I wasn’t even controlling it myself, but I was loving everything I saw. Now that I’ve gotten my hands on it, I get a chance to play and explore this game for myself.

Human : Fall Flat is a platforming puzzle game, but it’s unlike any other you might have played before. You play as Bob, a regular old human with nothing special about him. Bob dreams of falling, but his fall is not a simple one. As he falls, his dreams bring him to levels, levels filled with puzzles that he must solve.

Or rather, you must solve for him. Now remember, Bob has no special powers. He can walk, jump, and grab things with his arms, all things you have control over. Even his arms individually, the left with ZL and the right with ZR. Bob will grab out in whichever direction you have his head pointing, If there’s a switch, he’ll push it, and if it’s any sort of object or just plain surface, he’ll grab hold, allowing you to either pick up whatever it is, push/pull it, or even pull yourself up if you’re trying to climb.

Each level is open-ended, with numerous ways to solve the puzzles, or….just pick things up and throw them around. Other than, of course, the opening few levels which serve as a tutorial for how you can control Bob and what you can do with all of his fancy non-powers. Just about everything you see can be grabbed onto in an attempt to climb. Movable and key objects will be presented in a color, making them more than stand out against the white background.

However, Human : Fall Flat won’t be for everyone. The imagery for the individual levels is quite simple, filled with lots of polygonal shapes, typically with no more than a single color if they even have one at all. And the “soundtrack” that accompanies Bob on his journey is one of basic ambient noises for each level. Breezes blowing, water running, but nothing musical at all to bring any sense of…well, anything to the game.

Just remember, your wooden crate needs to fed, potty trained, and walked at least twice a day to stay healthy and energized

Despite the visual and audio bland-ness, the gameplay is still a ton of fun in Human : Fall Flat. The puzzles, and all the physics involved, feel quite advanced and very intuitive and it’ll actually feel like you’re helping Bob work to accomplish his task. The challenge isn’t so much in figuring out what you need to do to solve the levels, that’s usually really easy to decipher. A switch needs to be pressed, or a pressure plate needs a constant weight on it to stay activated. The challenge, instead, comes from actually getting those things doneIt won’t be easy solving all the puzzles, but it will sure as hell be a lot of fun.