Humanity

Humanity is a beautiful, modern reimagining of Lemmings that blends many different genres into its clever puzzles, and its powerful level editor has dizzying potential.

Humanity's warm presentation and tightly designed levels deliver an engaging and accessible puzzle game.

Lead a river of humans through complex levels in this delightful, ingenious and generous puzzler.

Ultimately, focusing too closely on any puzzle solution misses what’s special about Humanity. In the days since playing, I’ve found myself most often thinking not about a specific mechanic, but what each level looks like once completed. By removing my ability to influence the stage, the completion screen presents the purest form of the game’s beautiful aesthetic: an unending river of people jumping, swimming, climbing. Orderly, but overwhelming. Moving, united, toward a singular goal.

Humanity strikes a delicate balance between challenging me at every turn and allowing me to feel like the god its narrative props me up to be. It’s an imaginative experience that provides a rush I imagine computer programmers feel when dozens of commands and lines of code finally work together to create a desired outcome. Its puzzles come wrapped in a beautiful package, from its minimalist visuals to its excellent clicky electronic beats. And best of all, these elements work together to emphasize a simple but effective message about what it means to be human and why life’s most intricate puzzles are easiest to solve when we work together.

Humanity’s invention and weirdness makes it the perfect tonic to an increasingly risk-averse industry, offering a welcome return to the kind of eccentric oddities that endeared millions to PlayStation in the first place.

You, a shiny shiba inu, must lead the people into the light. Humanity's flowy puzzles require a satisfying blend of intuition and experience to complete, but story mode's unrelenting ambiguity makes my brain itch.

Humanity is a wonderfully different puzzle game brimming with ideas. It takes a few simple building blocks and combines them to create some surprisingly complex levels and challenges, keeping you on your toes as it constantly throws in new concepts. While the story mode has some inconsistencies in terms of difficulty, it still manages to keep you hooked all the way. And when you're done, there's an intuitive level editor and browser, in theory giving you all the puzzles you could want. If you're after something a little different, give this a shot - they don't often make them like this anymore.

I haven’t felt as challenged or as impressed by a puzzle game like Humanity since Portal 2 and The Talos Principle. Sony likely saw something special about it too (and this time at least, I agree), as it is one of the few games that will be available with a PS Extra or Premium subscription on day one. While Humanity does become less of a puzzler near the endgame, that’s a minor quibble in light of the risks it takes, its inventive range of content, its thought-provoking story, and its curiously peculiar presentation. (The dog is cute too.)

Humanity is one of the best video games of 2023, offering an unparalleled puzzle game experience with minimalistic design, addictive gameplay, and a compelling story, now available on Xbox and Game Pass.