![]() There's a lot of things that Human Resource Machine does really well. The art style is very fitting and the game is visually beautiful. As far as the rest of the presentation, Human Resource Machine is flawless. ![]() The plot that is there is interesting and has a sort of darkness about it, but it's not what I was hoping for. I was expecting a sort of dramatic payoff at the end of the game, but it never seemed to come. The story is told mostly through "coffee breaks" between programming assignments. ![]() While there's still a certain charm about the game, the plot is surprisingly shallow. The plot and story-telling abilities have always been a highlight of Tommorow Corporation games. This means that programmers will quickly blow this game in a few hours with relative ease and those unfamiliar will likely spend hours on each program, possibly to never finish them. Although no programming expirience is needed to play and complete this game, the ability to think like a programmer and advanced puzzle solving abilites are. This means that people without programming or puzzle-game expirience will likely be frusturated or downright unable to complete the game. Unless you are a programmer, the final puzzles of the game can be unreasonably difficult. Despite an easy introduction, the game steeply increases in difficulty. There are also a lot of cool resources that parellel those in IDLE environments and make the programming much more clean: the ability to comment, tabs for independent code writeups, and a very handy debugging tool that will show you the step-by-step actions of your program. The game gradually introduces new commands so that users easily understand how to use each. The problem statements start out very simple and are easy for anyone to quickly accomplish. ![]() These often require you to submit multiple sets of code for each level to complete. In addition to the main programming goal, each level has two additional and entirely optional optimization goals that ask you to limit the number of commands or steps of your program. The goal of your program is given in a problem statement and you can get hints and examples from one of your two bosses. Once you write one program, you'll immediately move on to the next, with a few opportunities for optional alternate paths and additional levels. The game progresses through a series of 41 levels, each representing a year of your human life, that each have a specific task to accomplish. Because you don't have RAM (remember: no computer), data in the form of numberes and letters are stored on physical floor tiles that have numerical adresses. The programming interface uses a simple drag and drop of commands in a list form that allows you to easily see a sequence of events and rearrange it as need be. It's a very basic language that consists of a dozen or so commands that do simple things: add/subtract numbers, copy to/from floor tiles, and jumping to other areas in the program (to create loops). Rather than teach or use a well established introductory language like java or python, the game presents it's own. It feels like the game is both trying to teach the concepts of programming while also appealing to programmers and computer scientists who already understand all the logical puzzles and solutions that are presented in the game. My main beef with this game is that it attempts to do two different things that don't realy work together. You, as a human, must physically "program" in order to complete tasks, thus: Human Resouce Machine. The work you do is programming, but you don't have any sort of computer to do it with. This time, you take on the role of a young employee who must climb the ranks of some corporation. Like Little Inferno, Human Resource Machine doesn't really play like a normal game. Press Copy provided by Tommorow Corporation Did it live up to hype after their history of stellar games? Probably not. The developers (who also had their hands in the excellent World of Goo), Tommorow Corporation, has finally put out another game: Human Resource Machine. Despite being entirely unorthodox, it had everything I never knew I wanted from a game. Remember Little Inferno from the Wii U's launch back in 2012? It was the first indie I played on Wii U and it remains to be one of my favorites.
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