Human Fall Flat: The Game That Doesn’t Fall Flat

Have you ever looked for a game that feels like one of those ‘Which one are you?’ BuzzFeed quizzes? 

Look no further than Human Fall Flat. A game that can be played alone, but is best played with at least one more player. The more people you play with the more you’ll discover there’s multiple ways to enjoy Human Fall Flat; by exploring, by sticking to solving the puzzles, and by finding the most obscene ways to mess with the environments. All these ways to play have a place in Human Fall Flat, especially if you’re an achievement hunter. 

Developed by No Brakes Games, Human Fall Flat is a ragdoll puzzle adventure game that was released July 2016. Human Fall Flat is available to play on Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, Windows, and Mobile, with limited online crossplay and local multiplayer. 

Human Fall Flat has you play as a ragdoll character that you can dress up as almost anything. The goal of Human Fall Flat is to solve all sorts of puzzles. Each level is broken into smaller sections that let the player learn the controls and different mechanics in each level. 

Human Fall Flat is broken into levels, or as the game calls them, dreams. These dreams are called that for a reason, each level is supposed to mimic the chaos that are dreams. There are two types of dreams in Human Fall Flat; core dreams and extra dreams. The core dreams are the longer levels taking 30 minutes to an hour each. There are currently 12 main dreams. The extra dreams take 15-30 minutes each. There are currently 18 extra dreams. 

The puzzles in the dreams are the perfect amount of complicated. Dreams tend to introduce new mechanics unique to each level- and sometimes used in later levels. The dream Water introduces boats and their mechanics. Boats are later used in other dreams like Candyland and Hike.

This uniqueness to each dream makes each one a fresh and new challenge, meaning Human Fall Flat hardly ever feels repetitive. My favorite of the core dreams are Dark and Aztec, for the mechanics they introduce and the atmosphere in each. 

The change in atmosphere with each dream also adds to the variety in Human Fall Flat. In the extra dreams Underwater, City, and Museum are my three favorites because of how different they are from each other. 

At the center of the atmosphere is the soundtrack. It’s mainly composed of piano and is rather dramatic. The music is reminiscent of Mozart and Beethoven. Like classical music, the soundtrack gets the player to focus without distracting from the game.

There is one issue with Human Fall Flat and that comes with the extra dreams. They tend to be the most ‘broken’ of the levels and that is purely because of the new mechanics introduced. The most notable of a level being broken is one of the newest extra dreams, Hike. A key element of Human Fall Flat is being able to latch onto surfaces and climb. In Hike many of the surfaces are hard to grab a hold of and leave the player to plummet.

Human Fall Flat sounds rather simple and it is. It's a lighthearted puzzle game meant to just get you thinking, not raging. Adding to the puzzles, is the controls. The character moves easily and the controls aren’t complicated at all; it's the arms that are the challenge. They move rigidly and independently. What makes the arms a difficult function to learn, is combining their use with maneuvering the rest of the character. For example, bending down to pick up a wire and then having to get the angle just right to plug the wire in, requires a mastery of the character controls. 

When you finish a puzzle there is one last thing you must do, jump. So find that bright green exit sign, take a leap of faith, and jump into Human Fall Flat. 

My Rating