Humanity is a puzzle game and, at times, quite a taxing one. At times like this, I like to dip into the menus and watch the video walkthrough for the particular level I’m stuck on. This is a lovely feature, but watching these videos is almost always a terrible mistake. That’s because, laid bare in such a manner, the sheer amount of stuff you’re doing in Humanity to solve a puzzle can quickly seem overwhelming. I have to do all that?! Instant brain freeze.
So at times like this, I shut off the walkthrough video more stumped than I was at the start. But then something magical happens. I return to the puzzle that has defeated me, and just start to tinker a bit. What if I did this, then that? What if I started by heading south instead of north? Now this is more like it. Suddenly I start to see where I’m going wrong, and I start to see, beyond that, what I will have to come to understand if I want to start going right. Humanity doesn’t yield to tinkering, exactly, but I think the game wants you to be in a sort of playful state where all possibilities are valid. It’s happy, even delighted, to let you solve puzzles by engaging with its mechanics for the sheer pleasure they hold in and of themselves. Through playfulness comes understanding. That’s Humanity.
Let’s go back a bit actually. Tetris Effect, the last Enhance published game I played, had a killer opening screen. Load it up and what do you get? A gold-tinged wind-blown feather of some kind, fluttering across the cosmos. Look closer and it might seem familiar. This, right, is Laniakea, Immeasurable Heaven, the galactic supercluster in which I’m typing this and you’re reading, as we’re all drawn, steadily, towards the Great Attractor.
Source – eurogamer.net
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