13 Points on Human Fall Flat - No Brakes Games - 2016 [PC]

1. This is a third person 3D puzzle platformer where your character looks and plays like a chubby toddler.

2. You know how in Assassin's Creed, where w/ no more effort required than to hold up on the controller, it looks like you are doing all this awesome parkour? Human Fall Flat is the opposite of that. Everything you do is really hard and you look stupid doing it.

3. Your chubby toddler's appearance can be completely customized so you can give it a tattoo of a butt w/ a butt shaped tattoo on it and it can be right on its butt. Between this and the fact that gameplay often consists of long bouts of flailing awkwardly through each level, one could be forgiven for thinking this is YouTube let's play fodder at first glance. I mean, it is... but it's also a good game.

4. This is one of those games where I look at it and think, "This looks like an indie game." It's got low poly graphics, solid colors w/o texture. It's blocky and simple looking and that suits the gameplay just fine.

5. As far as controls, while this is a third person game, it controls more like it's first person in some regards. Left and right make you shuffle sideways rather than turn and you change direction using the mouse/right stick. Frequently, you will need to use left/right triggers/mouse buttons to grab onto things. This is clumsy at first--and actually, it continues to be clumsy--but starts to make sense as you dig into the game. The controls aren't bad, they are intentionally awkward. This is a game where, to climb on a ledge, you need to manually grab it and then manually tell the game to pull yourself up. If this doesn't sound fun to you, don't worry; that's normal. Give it a go anyway.

6. I can't really get a bead on the music here. It's sparse and dramatic like something you might find in a heavy handed arsty fartsy kinda narrative game but this game is not that. It gives me a hint of something like Elmer Bernstein's music in Airplane movies where the soundtrack is composed as if the composer had no idea it's a comedy. Regardless of intent, I like it way better than if they tried to make some goofy music to match your character's movement.

7. The quality of the levels progress in the same trajectory as the early career of Metallica. The first couple are great and show a lot of promise. It's your Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightning type stuff. Then there are a couple that are real masterpieces where the disparate elements from previous levels fall into place, which would be Master of Puppets. Then for the last level, the developers overextend themselves and make something that is more technically impressive than previous levels but somehow less compelling. This would be ...And Justice For All. If they keep releasing levels, the next one will be a crowd-pleaser that won't stand the test of time and after that, you should just stop playing.

8. The levels here have an open world aspect, which is cool but unfortunately poorly executed at times. Sometimes, there is an alternate, harder solution to various puzzles that lets you skip some of the map. Sometimes you can just cheese your way through w/o solving the puzzles. Sometimes you accidentally cheese your way through and miss puzzles you actually want to solve. There is a method you can use to climb sheer walls that can let you cheese even more of the game, including basically entire levels, but I never got the hang of it. It's all good in the end but I think a little more play testing might have helped here.

9. There are moments though, were you stumble your chubby toddler out to a certain portion of a level and the grand, blocky vistas and dramatic music combine into moments that are unexpectedly beautiful. It's called art, motherfucker. Have you heard of it?

10. This game has no plot.

11. Ordinarily, I say it's the cardinal sin of puzzle games when you have a puzzle figured out but the solution is still difficult to execute. Human Fall Flat commits this sin repeatedly and egregiously yet somehow still works. Thanks for making me look like an idiot, No Brakes Games...

12. This one seems like a good candidate for speedrunners. I suppose being able to skip through levels works in this regard but it's more that completing the puzzles quickly would require a really in-depth mastery of the controls. Again, this is a game where simply climbing up a ledge requires multiple actions from the player. You can screw up even the simplest things. Getting through the whole game unscathed without dying would be a feat. Getting through quickly on top would require serious commitment.

13. What makes this game work is the fact that it's satisfying. Everything you do, you actually do. It doesn't matter if you are walking from point to point or arranging the pieces of a complicated puzzle. Every small action that happens is a direct result of the player's input. There is no focus on ease or making the player feel powerful and that's refreshing in a game these days. If you are a fan of platformers, puzzles and not having everything handed to you, this is well worth checking out.