Human Resource Machine

 PC
User Score
8.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 46 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 32 out of 46
  2. Mixed: 11 out of 46
  3. Negative: 3 out of 46

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  1. lttlgamer
    Oct 30, 2015
    5
    I will say first that I am a huge fan of Kyle Gabler's World of Goo and Little Inferno. Simply, this game does not deserve to sit on the same shelf as those two masterpieces. The game is a novelty, but quickly becomes repetitive and tedious. I will admit I completed the game, but I was not really thrilled about it. What kept me going was the hope that there would be some cool "endI will say first that I am a huge fan of Kyle Gabler's World of Goo and Little Inferno. Simply, this game does not deserve to sit on the same shelf as those two masterpieces. The game is a novelty, but quickly becomes repetitive and tedious. I will admit I completed the game, but I was not really thrilled about it. What kept me going was the hope that there would be some cool "end game" like Little Inferno, but there wasn't. I am a programmer and I thought it was a little too technical and restricting to be fun. The game is not dynamic at all, you literally do the same thing but just harder once you have reached like level 8. This would be like World of Goo having each level be to build a taller and taller tower. It's ludicrous. The music is awesome as always. The story was horrid and insulting. It was completely slapped on to the game. Sigh. I hope Kyle still has some good games up his sleeve, because dude is a genius. Not sure what happened with this game.… Expand
  2. TitaniumDragon
    May 8, 2016
    5
    Human Resource Machine
    For the PC
    Played using Mouse Overall Rating: C Human Resource Machine is a puzzle game – or more accurately, a programming game. You are given a very limited set of coding instructions which expand over the course of the game, and your goal is to solve all of the puzzles within a certain number of instructions or a certain number of lines executed. You have    Human Resource Machine
    For the PC
    Played using Mouse
    Overall Rating: C

    Human Resource Machine is a puzzle game – or more accurately, a programming game. You are given a very limited set of coding instructions which expand over the course of the game, and your goal is to solve all of the puzzles within a certain number of instructions or a certain number of lines executed. You have some basic looping commands (basically, GOTO and GOTO IF 0 and GOTO IF < 0), addition and subtraction, variables, pointers, and comments.

    The goal is basically to take inputs and output according to the instructions. There are 41 levels in all.

    There… honestly is little to be said about this game. It is pretty much a pure programming game, and while it might be an interesting puzzle for a lot of folks to solve, on the other hand, I feel like if you didn’t understand programming, a lot of this game would be very inaccessible, despite its supposedly easy interface. Writing programs in it is a process of click and drag, there’s no real ability to create subroutines, and sometimes it can feel a bit tedious when you realize you’ve barely exceeded the necessary parameters and are going to have to take an entirely new approach.

    Honestly, if you’re going to spend six hours messing around with programming, you might as well spend that time messing around with a real programming language. The story here is at best vague and at worst obtuse and self-contradictory; are you working for robots? Are you a robot yourself? Who knows, and who cares? The whole thing ends up feeling rather pointless in the end.    … Expand
  3. auditbadger
    Aug 29, 2019
    7
    I think that this is truly a unique game and I would recommend that if you are a fan of this type of genre then I think you should give this game a try.

Awards & Rankings

84
#84 Best PC Game of 2015

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
78

Generally favorable reviews - based on 12 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 12
  3. Negative: 0 out of 12
  1. Pelit (Finland)
    Mar 3, 2016
    77
    Human Resource Machine Does what a good puzzle game should: gives you a limited set of tools and tasks you with doing the seemingly impossible. However, the challenge may eventually prove too much for non-coders. The lack of a deeper story is disappointing as well, at least when compared to the wonderful Little Inferno. Still, if you enjoy programming puzzles, it's hard to go wrong with this game. [Jan 2016]
  2. Riot Pixels
    Feb 26, 2016
    75
    In contrast to Hack ‘n’ Slash and The Magic Circle where you can only break or corrupt the system, Human Resource Machine allows you to create your own algorithms which is much closer to actual programming.
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  3. Eurogamer Italy
    Dec 22, 2015
    90
    The developers of Little Inferno reappear with the new Human Resource Machine: a great puzzle game that engage the player between mathematical logic and disquieting irony.
    Read full review
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