Human Fall Flat

Human: Fall Flat is a physics puzzle game where players play a customizable human, referred to in-game as Bob. Bob is stated to have no superhuman abilities; he is purely human. Players can make him grab objects and climb up ledges using both his arms and looking with his head.

Although Bob's standard appearance is a featureless, minimalist all-white human with a baseball cap, players are able to customize him to their liking, painting his body in a different array of colors and dressing him in a variety of costumes.

The game is open-ended. Each level is themed differently, each containing multiple solutions to their unique puzzles. Various remotes hidden in the game cause instructional videos to appear, helping players learn the gameplay and ultimately solve the puzzles.

Human: Fall Flat was developed by Tomas Sakalauskas, founder of Lithuanian studio No Brakes Games. In 2012, Sakalauskas abandoned his work in IT to try video game development. Initially Sakalauskas concentrated on making mobile games although he ran out of money partway through; this, combined with him questioning the ethics of the freemium model of most mobile games, led him instead to turn development towards a PC game. Sakalauskas has stated that Human: Fall Flat was his "last shot at gaming".

The game began life as a prototype for Intel's RealSense motion sensing camera. Although Sakalauskas eventually realized that the game would work better with traditional control and transitioned away from the device. Sakalauskas set out to make the game in the vein of a puzzle game similar to Limbo or Portal, however, when playtesting the game with his son Sakalauskas noted that "he did everything possible not to solve puzzles", instead just having fun with the physics engine. This caused Sakalauskas to change his approach and make the puzzles "not really watertight". Initially the game was only single player. Although Sakalauskas received several requests for a multiplayer mode, he felt the physics involved would make online play impossible; however, he eventually formed a solution using technology from Nvidia, and in October 2017, an online multiplayer feature was added, allowing up to eight people to play online or by LAN.

The game was released as a prototype on Itch.io after which many prominent streamers began promoting it, prompting Sakalauskas to release a Steam version nine months later. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions followed in May 2017 with a Nintendo Switch version that December. A port to mobile platforms developed by Codeglue and published by 505 Games supporting iOS and Android was released on 26 June 2019. A Stadia port by Lab42 released on 1 October 2020, followed by Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 versions the following year.

Critical reception

Human: Fall Flat received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. Dan Stapleton of IGN recommended the game for watching rather than actually playing, praising the slapstick controls, humorous animations, and character customization. Zack Furniss of Destructoid enjoyed the replayability of the puzzles and praised the multiple solutions each puzzle provided.

Sales

By February 2018, more than 2 million copies of the game had been sold across all platforms. According to Curve, the sales of the game were boosted with the addition of online multiplayer in late 2017; by early January 2018, the game had broken over 1 million units sold on the Windows version, but within a month, had seen an additional 700,000 sales. By June 2018, the game achieved over 4 million sales across all platforms.

Human: Fall Flat was the first video game released by Super Rare Games, which is a limited-print company that physically publishes Nintendo Switch games. 5,000 copies were made available to order in March 2018. In Japan, the Nintendo Switch version of Human Fall Flat released by Teyon Japan, a subsidiary of Teyon, was the fourteenth best-selling game during its first week of release, with 5,241 copies sold.

As of February 2021, the game had sold more than 25 million copies; part of these sales included the popularity of the game in China over 2020 after being released there through XD Inc and 505 Games, in part due to the game's popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As of March 2023, Human: Fall Flat had sold more than 40 million copies.

Accolades

In June 2023, Human: Fall Flat 2 was announced at Devolver Direct 2023.

• Official website