This game is a difficult ask for $30, if you are subscribed to a PS Plus Extra feel free to try it out. It starts out amazing, but later mechanics can be very frustrating and too trial-and-error. The game is lacking a lot of QoL features, and the soundtrack is super hit or miss too.

Mechanics
The big advertised aspects that made me try the game, leading infinite streams of people through fun puzzle platforming challenges in real-time, get sidelined in later chapters, and I didn't find a lot of the new stuff as enjoyable. There's far less platforming, which was my favorite aspect of the game.

The game starts out with puzzles, but later on, it often turns into trial-and-error when combat starts to be involved. Sometimes, enemy movements even happen during the middle of the stage, and there's not enough warning when it happens. Other times, it feels like RNG whether or not you win a combat, and some missions are extremely unforgiving, making you fail the level or lose access to Goldies if you lose even one human.

In many levels, time is stopped while you place commands, then you start time and see if it works out. These stages become more tedious than hard when enemies are involved. Instead of discovering the solution to a tricky puzzle, you're retrying over and over, adjusting your commands tile by tile until you find the exact setting that either avoids or defeats the enemy, and then reaches the exit.

In some time stop stages, you can position some humans before starting time. However, these starting positions of humans are not saved, so you have to re-do them each time you retry.

Goldies
Goldies start out as bonus humans that you have to safely guide to the exit without letting them fall. This mechanic starts out super fun, and you're often sending something so valuable flying through the sky and hoping they make it. Some of them are very challenging to collect and bring to the exit, especially in real-time, and it was great fun in early chapters.

But later on, Goldies become required to unlock the exit to complete many stages, defeating the purpose. It's not bonus anymore. Some required story stages only have 1 Goldy, and you must get it to clear the stage.

Some later stages have extremely trivial Goldies, directly on your path or right next to it. I've even found one that was placed a couple tiles in front of the exit. It was just... free.

Other Problems
You can see how the enemy humans will move. They have arrows and stuff just like the ones you place, but in black. However, you cannot see these arrows unless time is moving. You need to start time, and then you must enter free camera mode. Otherwise, you can't see the enemy arrows. I went through the entire game not realizing that this information was available because of this issue.

During time stop stages, the start button is a physical location you have to run to. When you retry, you get teleported back to the starting position and then have to walk back to where your error was, fix your error... and then walk back to the start button. This should've been streamlined somehow.

Soundtrack is very hit or miss, and the music selector is bugged; when you retry a stage, the music resets back to default.

Some combat or physics RNG can cause you to randomly win or fail a stage without changing anything. If a Goldy enters an intersection between two streams of humans, it might get diverted into the other path. It might not. It's random which way it goes, and I've had to restart stages until I get the desired outcome.

HUMANITY is not a bad game, but it's just very rough around the edges.

Reviewed on Mar 19, 2024


4 Comments


1 month ago

Does the game have a story?

1 month ago

@RedBackLoggd Yep, it does have some kind of story. It's not much, but it's there.

1 month ago

Thanks man

21 days ago

I was curious, but reading what you wrote has discouraged me.