Human: Fall Flat

Genre: 3D Platformer / Puzzle-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local Split-Screen), 2-8 Co-Op (Local Wireless / Online)

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Review:

Human: Fall Flat is a 3D Platformer and physics-based Puzzle-Platfomer released on PC in 2016, ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2017, then to mobile devices in 2019, and then to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2020. This game presents players with various levels where players must find a way to that level’s end, though it is often left open to the player how to do this.

The visuals in Human: Fall Flat are extremely simple, making use of mostly low-poly untextured 3D visuals and backed by a light instrumental soundtrack. The game’s visuals seem somewhat reminiscent of a physics tech demo. Depending on who you ask, this simple, unadorned visual presentation is either amateurish or a part of the games charm.

The gameplay is similarly divisive. Players take the role of a generic-looking humanoid character with largely modest, normal skills – you can jump but not very high and with no acrobatics to speak of, you can climb but only to the top of platforms you can reach the top of, and you can have either hand grab or release whatever it’s touching at any given time.

Players control what they grab on to by moving the camera, looking up to manipulate your hands upward, and down to manipulate them down. This means that climbing up a small ledge requires moving the camera to look up, pressing both L & R to use both hands to grasp on, looking down with the camera to move your hands down and lift yourself up, and then releasing the L & R buttons once you’re mostly on the ledge.

This makes for extremely awkward controls for this absolutely vital maneuver, and it’s only one instance of the game’s bizarre controls interfering with the gameplay. As I mentioned, your jumps aren’t great, so platforming in this game is pretty terrible. Manipulating objects to move them the way you want is extremely frustrating, and even doing something as simple as moving often feels more difficult than it needs to be, as if your character is drunk and stumbling around.

To some extent, this is no doubt due to how much this game leans into its physics-based gameplay, which also plays a massive role in the game’s puzzles. Despite your character’s limited abilities, this game presents players with some fiendishly clever puzzles whose solutions will often come down to a combination of exploring the environment around you and applying some amount of real-world thinking.

For example, a lever controls a door you need to enter, but closes before you can run to it. The solution? Well, you could try to search for a different path, you could try to place an obstruction that will fall into the doorway when it opens and keep it from closing again, or you can drop objects on the lever to keep it pressed down when you leave it. This sort of open-ended sandbox design really makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something when you’re managed to pass an obstacle like this.

Players seeking help in the game’s puzzles can play with up to 8 others using the game’s local and online multiplayer options. When I checked, it looked like these lobbies are still absolutely flourishing, even more than half a decade after the game launched.

As a result of both very good and very bad qualities present in Human: Fall Flat, this is a pretty divisive game. On the one hand, the excellent open-ended design makes for some truly rewarding puzzles. On the other, the frustrating controls make this a surprisingly difficult and often frustrating game. I think that your enjoyment of the game is likely to come down to how much its worse elements bother you, and how much of them you’re willing to tolerate to get to the game’s better qualities.

tl;dr – Human: Fall Flat is a 3D Platformer and physics-based Puzzle-Platfomer where players must make use of the game’s heavily physics-based nature to reach the end of each level. These sandbox-style elements are absolutely delightful and make for some truly joyous moments, but that joy is heavily marred by this game’s poor and frustrating controls. This is a divisive game, and more than most games I can’t tell you whether you’re likely to enjoy it. Just know that this game has some really rewarding gameplay, but you have to put up with a lot of frustration to get to it.

Grade: C+

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