Human: Fall Flat

• Developer: No Brakes Games
• Genre: Platform-puzzle
• Version: -

User Rating:

Human: Fall Flat for Xbox One and other platforms is a game in which you have to beat levels one by one, fighting with dodgy controls, gravity, and treacherous physics. It's based on slapstick comedy and tricky puzzles solving. Only even the simplest of tasks are hard to fulfill when your spine and bones are made of gelatin.

Human: Fall Flat Gameplay: the squishier they are, the harder they fall

Human: Fall Flat is all about pain. Which you don't have to feel, luckily. Otherwise, you'd have to stuff your face with painkillers because here you will have to experience all sorts of traumas:

• Falling down from a construction site platform on a pile of bricks.
• Catapulting yourself to breach a castle wall.
• Getting hit with giant fan blades.
• Being entombed under an avalanche of stones.
• Riding a wrecking ball only to be smashed with it, like a pigeon with a shovel.

And so forth.

Seriously, danger lurks everywhere in this game. And by downloading Human: Fall Flat you sort of make a ridiculous death pact. See a door with the green Exit sign? Open it to dive into scary low-poly nothingness. A red door that possibly contains a key to beating a level? Unlock it to get hit with boulders and lose a fat portion of progress.

However, it's not that gloomy as it seems at first. Puzzles are actually clever, requiring you to build various contraptions and carefully analyze clues (including audio hints). That cognitive challenge together with Octopus Dad-like goofiness, thrilling high jumps, and bruising stunts evoke an appetite for that bone-crushing adventure within you. If only the doughy men had any bones.

Graphics: the color of pain 

Perhaps what will enthrall you about HFL is its skin-editor. Imagine a 3D figurine made of hygienically white clay, which you can paint any way you like, using an app similar to MS Paint. Apart for premade costumes - policeman, fireman, some guy in a yellow jumpsuit -, you can design your own. 

And your fantasy won't be limited at all. It can be Deadpool with a shamelessly visible butt-crack, a sociopathic clown with a tomato nose and a black-eye, Pringles mustache man, dressed as a somber roofer, etc. Just make sure you're plodding enough.

Along with the doughy main character, everything else even in Human: Fall Flat for Windows  (7,8,10) looks low-textured. There are no details, nuances and pleasant visual trifles whatsoever.

But the game doesn't become repellent because of such rustic aesthetics.  On the contrary, it feels like a silly and bizarre dream from the childhood, in which you are made of boiled noodles, can't fully control your body, but you have to run from someone. And it feels ok-ish all of a sudden.

Speaking of controls. Perhaps the best ones are in Human: Fall Flat for PC. Mouse for manipulating sticky hands + keyboard garner more precision and therefore less frustration. The same goes to Human: Fall Flat for Mac.

On the contrary Human: Fall Flat for PS4 allows deeper immersion into the game, for the thumb-sticks provide better feedback when you interact with objects and environment.

Share agony with friends

Over the time re-tries and knavish controls may turn this kooky carnival of traumatic experience into a buzzkill. Our Human: Fall Flat review strongly recommends you to call a friend to let the doughy man finally escape his nightmare.

E.g. in Human: Fall Flat for Switch you can detach Joy-Cons, re-sync them with your Switch and enter the split-screen mode. It's a superb way to prove to critics that judging from aside is easier than handling the biz personally. And also an infinite resource for decent trolling.

Helping Hand: Tips and Tricks

Some puzzles in HFF may force you into long, long head-scratching. We'll give you a couple of ideas to use, but remember: this game is about experimenting and improvising. So the right solutions are only those that work.

I. Catapulting

On the medieval level, you will be provided with a catapult and a pile of boulders to crush the castle wall. That operation may become quite arduous and lengthy so place yourself in the catapult and launch yourself to land behind the wall instead.

II. Climb like Spidey

Climbing can be more efficient:

• Grab a wall with one hand - left or right, both are fine.
• Look up then look down rapidly.
• Grab the wall higher.

And for those, who prefer to be fast and furious:

• Grab a wall.
• Jump.
• Press Left & Right.
• Climb higher.

Those methods require skillful fingers, so practice first.

III. Rusty Hook

If you manage to obtain a hook (it looks like a big cane), you can use basically any wire as a zip line. It can take you through the level, and all you need to do is to choose the angle accurately.

VI. Less Jumping, More Riding

If a windmill is featured in a level, you can use its whips for transportation. Jump on or hold on to one of the windmill whips and wait until you're high/low enough to jump to your destination.

V. Killdozer

The game grants you a privilege of operating heavy machinery. A bulldozer, equipped with a wrecking ball to be precise. Gain enough of momentum by swinging the ball and do the necessary wall-smashing.

VI. Motor Boat

There is a motor boat that you can get into your possession, but you'll have to row your way to it on a regular boat with paddles first. Rowing is done through Look up/Look down mechanics. But after you get the motorboat, you can hijack a whole ship - it's controlled with two red levers.

VII. Big Fan of Yours

Occasionally you'll stumble upon giant fans. They are powered by special furnaces that in turn must be manually fired up by you with chunks of coal. The giant fans are like iFLY indoor skydiving simulators and they'll propel you into the air NASA-style.

Human: Fall Flat isn't the easiest slapstick game. It's shaky, wobbly and wiggling. Its controls are far from being friendly and at times you'll be frenzied with your ineptitude to make the doughy guy do one simple move. And there is no Human: Fall Flat for mobile devices.

But at the same, it's funny, especially if a friend of yours joins the game and you can tease, troll and pester each other. And when you finally manage to achieve a seemingly unachievable goal - the experience becomes truly cathartic.

Download Human: Fall Flat to learn what it feels like to be a squishy, jello person.

Pros:

• Excellent physics
• Dizzily high jumps
• Enjoyable co-op
• Character customization.

Cons:

• Knotty controls
• Poor sound effects
• Requires a lot of retries
• No Human: Fall Flat for Android.