Human Fall Flat
A physics based puzzle game that’s co-operative for up to eight players maximum, Human Fall Flat allows you to customise a white and impressively immortal marshmallow man before - quite literally - dropping you into the world. Wobble, wibble, fall and fling yourself through the thirteen levels, experimenting with different puzzle solutions as you go. Careful not to stumble off a cliff as you do so, though.
● Co-operative Puzzle Platformer
● Released 22 / 07 / 2016
● Developed by No Breaks Games, Codeglue
● Published by Curve Digital, 505 Games, DMM GAMES
● Platform: Xbox One / PS4 / PC / Nintendo Switch
[played on PC]
Reviewed: 01/04/2020
My experience with Human Fall Flat was, I’ll be honest, almost entirely positive. It’s not a very long game - unless you play with friends who would sooner sabotage your puzzle attempts by humping your head and hitting you with sticks, Magi - but it offers a staggering amount of replayability. Every level is comprised of multiple puzzles, with the earlier levels used to introduce and ease you into the game’s mechanics and physics system, and these puzzles have multiple ways of being solved. Every level itself also has any number of given shortcuts, limited only by your creativity and sheer stubborn force of will. Several of the game’s achievements actually relate to finding puzzle shortcuts and completing sections of levels in a certain amount of time.
Just two buds, sittin’ on a bed. There’s certainly nothing conspicuous about this.
There’s something to be said for a game where at least two or three of my current sixteen hour playtime was spent purely fucking around, simply for the sheer joy of it. I played through the entire game together with Magi in a co-operative mode, and while we spent the majority of our time completing the game and achievement hunting, we also spent no small amount of time giving ourselves silly personal challenges or simply (and sometimes, literally) just hanging around. The physics of Human Fall Flat are most certainly not what you’d call realistic, but during our play through of the game they were definitely stable and for the most part consistent. Trying to find new ways to beat puzzles wasn’t just fun, but was genuinely thought-provoking, and that was in part due to the way the physics worked. Could you actually, in real life, just hump a plank of wood into an awkward position with the goal of flinging yourself into a misty blue oblivion when you inevitably fail to hit the platform you were aiming for? No. No, almost certainly not. Does that take away from how fun the game is? Never.
Not to say the game is perfect. In truth, the game’s controls can be a little bit clunky, and at times I grew particularly frustrated with trying to pick things up and interact with certain objects. Aiming my little marshmallow hands (or penguin hands in my case, because I elected to be a penguin in a cop suit) was sometimes very troublesome and would result in me grabbing onto the ground or a different item I didn’t really want to touch. Similarly, your flexible little marshmallow man is possessed of a flexibility that would make a pro contortionist envious, but this doesn’t always work in your favour. Several times, my penguin cop would wind up with an arm bent back over his head and just stuck in position, and I’d need to wiggle and ragdoll myself furiously to try and free the arm up and regain proper use of it. Despite being generally reliable and predictable, the physics do sometimes seem to break or otherwise not work in a way you feel like they should - a curse of many physics game, to be fair - and this too can lead to frustrating moments where things just won’t fit in their proper places or where something falls into the abyss and you have to wait for it to drop back down from the sky in order to attempt a solution again. Timed achievements can also feel very particular, with some of the more gruelling ones seeming to not always count even if you do everything required of you; one particular achievement in the medieval level that required perfect parkour across a certain puzzle without touching the “floor” refused to trigger several different times, forcing increasingly frustrating backtracking or level restarts. And, for a game with so many ways to get from point A to point B, it can be shockingly difficult to get from point B back to point A sometimes, which makes backtracking for achievements particularly annoying in some areas.
I can assure you that this is not how you are supposed to reach the bell tower. But when the little stick you’re meant to use to do a cool action slide down the rope falls off the cliff, never to return, desperate times just call for desperate measures.
I also certainly didn’t help Chef Knight’s attempts at climbing down the rope one arm at a time any easier by swinging in violent circles, either, but I can’t say I have regrets about it.
In Conclusion
Human Fall Flat is an experience I’d recommend, and is worth the price tag that it comes with. While a small game, it has deceptive longevity thanks to the physic simulation foundations on which it was built, and I really have to praise the developers for allowing their players the creative freedom to tackle puzzles and levels in almost any way they can find. Better than that, Human Fall Flat still receives updates to this day and incorporates community content. As of the time of writing, a Steam workshop competition just ended amongst the community, with the winner receiving an impressive prize of $10,000 and having their level added into the game as a free update for all users to play, with four achievements unique to that level also included. A second competition recently came to a close with a similar prize pool for the winner, though results have yet to be announced. It’s great to see a game not just have workshop content available, but to see the developers acknowledging the talented users you can find creating workshop content and rewarding them. While the physics can be sometimes frustrating and the controls a little clunky, the amount of fun this game is more than outweighs the little niggles. Bring your friends, too; co-operative play is almost a must to truly experience the fun interactivity this game has to offer!
+ The Good
Extremely replayable, offering a surprising but optional longevity to an otherwise smaller game
Generally consistent physics makes puzzle solving fun and encourages creativity
Item respawning ensures that it’s almost impossible to softlock yourself at any given puzzle
Generous checkpoint system to make achievement hunting relatively painless
Continued updates that include workshop content from the community
- The Bad
The controls can sometimes be clunky, especially when aiming little marshmallow hands at small objects
Certain levels feel like they don’t fit the game or otherwise overstay their welcome far too long, particularly the level “Dark”
Achievements can be frustratingly buggy and require multiple runs to get them to register
The physics sometimes don’t behave the way you’d expect them to, making certain challenge achievements quite tough
