Physics-based puzzlers always strike me as unique in a very particularly interesting way: it doesn’t matter how you get to B from A, just that you simply do. As much as I sometimes enjoy puzzle/adventure titles like Zero Escape, Professor Layton or Broken Sword 2, sometimes I just want to solve the puzzle MY way (usually with a heavy dose of crowbar or knee-capping). As much as Human: Fall Flat made me feel the liberating rush of doing things my way, in the end it felt like an empty rush akin to a sugar-rush.
Human: Fall Flat, besides a crass description of a death-by-gravity, is a physics-based puzzle title by No Brakes Games. You play as Bob. Who is Bob? Bob is a doughy lad who is falling from the sky. However, Bob is rather blobby, and so can’t fall too far or his fragile shell of guts will burst across the polished wooden floor after crashing through the roof of Marks & Spencer. Needless to say, offending the upper/middle class in London usually ends in being sent to The Club. This is why you have to launch yourself through designated jumping spots onto islands below, working your way down.
Between Bob and the designated jumping spot lies a collection of physics-based puzzles, each one holding a theme specific to the island. Maybe you’ll be leaping into a power plant, or possibly a medieval castle or perhaps you’ve stumbled upon an office block. Each of these themes actually mix up what is expected of you. One mid-game example offered the medieval castle, which had me playing with trebuchets to launch things like myself into stone walls. It lends a feeling of distinctiveness to the adventure, rather than the journey blurring together into a numbered order of islands.
Upon these islands lie a good few rooms, each one demanding you to go to the next area by solving the environmental layout. Despite the simple objective, it is the tools in front of you that will leave you scratching your head with a slight smile on your lips. With a door, a floor button that opens said door and a crate, what do you do? Maybe you’ll do the obvious thing of pressing the button with a crate and swaggering through? However, maybe you’ll channel your fury, stand on the button and see if you can fling your crate between the doors so you can climb through? It is just satisfying to be able to solve things your way, feeling like a smug devious basta- *ahem* bloke for playing the game your way, and not the way the developers may have intended.
If you peel the satisfaction away, eeever so gently, there is another layer here. Human: Fall Flat is also funny with its puzzles. Sometimes you’ll giggle as you solve the puzzle in a way that you think was unintended (e.g. screw breaking the wall with rocks, just fling yourself over with the trebuchet), or even laugh at the various odd tasks it seems to demand of you. Imagine trying to get your dough boy to drive a boat, a fork-lift truck or even a dumper truck, laughing as things go slowly wrong in the best of ways. It just creates a silliness that avoids the stale dry nature of a lot of puzzle titles.
So you may decide, being the cheating devil you are, to start dragging along as much equipment as you can. After all, there’s nothing stopping you from taking the wires from one room to the next – or is there? Sadly, although understandably, if you reload the game mid-level you will arrive at the checkpoint with none of your previous bounty. You’ll still be able to solve the puzzle, as the tools to solve it always lie in the same room, but your creativity is lessened by reloading.
Although, speaking of creativity, often the puzzle reveals itself in seconds, indicating what must be done to progress on. You’ll also quickly work out how to achieve it. Where the numbing difficulty often comes in is in handling your boneless boiled-egg-y body to do it. Bob is clearly a drunk toddler without a spine. He’ll do things you don’t want to do, when you don’t want to do them.
Meanwhile, you’ll likely try to jump to get more height to do something. This is rebuffed as you’ll gain very little height and collapse on the floor, taking a few moments for the room to stop spinning before standing again. It just devolves into control wrestling, as the game tests your patience rather than your creativity.
Finally, there are the system errors. Sadly, especially concerning the Power Plant level, the game has a tendency to crash my graphics card. This is despite my PC exceeding the recommended specifications by quite a margin. It is possible this problem will be fixed upon the final release (today), but the frequency of said crashing rendered the game unplayable by the end of the Power Plant level for me.
The final score for Human: Fall Flat is a 6/10. Sadly, it is the video game equivalent of a bar magnet windmill. I was attracted to Human: Fall Flat’s freedom to find a solution layered upon something incredibly silly. Suddenly, without notice, I’d then be violently repelled away as I’d wrestle with my character or the system errors. I could see some people still being drawn in, seeing the drunk toddler puzzler as akin to Surgeon Simulator in the humour and interesting challenge, but most may end up pushed off for the very reason I was.
To me, a physics puzzler should be about environmental manipulation, not character manipulation. While some puzzle titles clearly embrace your rag-doll being the conundrum, I admit I find them hollow experiences. They seem to less test your problem-solving and more your patience for doing the same thing over and over.
If wrestling with a boneless blob is your type of silly joy, go wild, you raving devil you. Run through the knee-high grass meadows, holding tight the hand of Human: Fall Flat. Feel the wind in your hair and the soil under your feet, knowing nothing will ever part the two of you. I will never stop you, even as I look on at the increasingly smaller shadows of you both on the horizon.