The Stack

I said before that, past a certain point, the puzzles in The Humans amount to a straightforward application of principles already learned. This isn’t completely true. One thing muddies the waters: lack of knowledge of the levels. You only see a screenful of the level at a time, centered around the human you’re currently controlling. Unless there’s something I’ve missed — which could easily be the case, given what else the docs have failed to disclose about the UI — the only way to scroll the view is to move. Thus, it’s frequently the case that I have a choice of available paths and no idea which to tackle first. Very likely one will hold the key to progress on the other — a pressure plate, a torch to burn a bush, an extra spear to kill a dinosaur — but both will require a significant investment of time to explore, requiring stack-building or repeated spear-passing. There have even been cases where there’s a torch in full view, tempting the player to waste time retrieving it, that turns out to have no use on the level.

Thus, the levels take on aspects of maze. Once you have a rope, you can pretty much always move as a team. But sometimes it’s worthwhile to just scout ahead with one guy. Indeed, some levels do this for you, placing humans at various places, places that make them useless physically, unable to leave the platform they’re on until the others bring a spear or a rope, but useful for the intelligence they bring about their position. It’s a little like a scout unit in a RTS, dispelling the fog of war.

Another thing: When you switch control between humans, the view glides smoothly to the new one. This lets you see everything between the two. There are times when I’ve deliberately taken advantage of this.