7 Billion Humans is a sequel to Human Resource Machine. Both are games about solving programming puzzles, which I was skeptical would be fun. Mind you, I’m a huge lover of puzzles. And I’ve often daydreamed about being a programmer. I’ve even dabbled in learning a language or two. Sadly, it’s hard for me to get passionate about learning the basics. It’s a chore to get my beginner code to do the most basic of things. And as my ever-large goals stay far out of reach, I end up throwing in the towel. So, I was quite surprised to enjoy 7 Billion Humans as much as I did!

Developer: Tomorrow Corporation

Publisher: Tomorrow Corporation

10 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $14.99

Thin but Funny Premise

7 Billion Humans is set in the distant future when robots have automated all our work. The people of the world are not happy. They demand jobs. And so the robots create the best jobs. Huge. Believe me, you’ve never seen this many jobs. And all housed in an office building that is so big it’s visible from space!

The story is presented in a funny and playful way. The writing in some of the levels got a few chuckles out of me. I was always curious to see what kind of wacky assignment was up next. But ultimately, the focus is on the gamified programming puzzle gameplay, not the story.

Base Gameplay

Where in Human Resource Machine you were in charge of one employee, in 7 Billion Humans you control several at the same time. While it starts off easy, you’ll soon be in command of a dozen workers that are tasked, for example, with writing the numbers 0-99 on data-cubes scattered around a room. This may not sound that challenging until you realize that each worker is following the exact same code, but you need to end up with one result. How do the individual workers know which numbers they should write, and where?

The “IF” command comes to the rescue! It allows you to let your workers do something different depending on whether certain conditions are met. The “IF” command will be used in almost every solution. But due to the versatile nature of this command, an increase in difficulty, and new commands, each puzzle will offer something unique. And, whenever I found a solution, I savored it. It’s extremely satisfying to see your code in action, which is one of the core strengths of 7 Billion Humans.

Imperfect solutions

However, at times there was a bittersweet taste to my solutions. I would know how to solve the puzzle, but it would require me to write dozens of lines of code. I knew this wasn’t intended, but I couldn’t find a way to write it smarter and more quickly. Seeing my workers complete their goal made it feel worth it, but I was left with mixed feelings about how I got there.

I’d like to have had the option to see the intended solution after completing the assignment. This would have helped with the learning process. It’s helpful that you can track a worker, as they follow your program step by step. Visually seeing your code in action helps find problems and solutions. Sadly you can only move forward through the code, this feels quite limiting when you want to focus on a specific step that is confusing.

Furthermore, a better hint system could help people from creating long inefficient code. The existing hints do point in the right direction, but they are one dimensional and don’t offer much help in case the solution eludes you. Luckily, it’s possible to skip levels. If you’re really stuck, you can come back later and look at the problem with fresh eyes.

Optional Challenges

On the other hand, I do appreciate the freedom that 7 Billion Humans provides. It’s fun to be able to try everything and have the game judge you only on whether your idea works. For example, you can limit yourself from using certain commands in a puzzle. If you want to test your skills even further you can try the optional size and speed challenges, which get you to think outside the box. I expect this will be a challenge even for those already familiar with coding. But be warned, often the solutions to these problems aren’t pretty. The more you optimize something to run quickly, the likelier you’ll end up with dozens of lines of code. And the more you optimize for size, the longer your program will take to complete due to performance-related inefficiencies.

Controls

In handheld, the touchscreen controls work great and everything works really intuitively. I personally favored docked, however, as I prefer seeing the problem I’m thinking about on a larger screen. When playing docked, you use either the left or right joy-con as a pointer mouse to select things on the screen. This works well enough. Though I should note I did experience the occasional glitch of my pointer visually disappearing from the screen. This typically happened after I found an imperfect solution that didn’t work 100% of the time. As you can imagine, it makes it hard to select anything with an invisible pointer. Luckily, backing out of the level to the level select screen brings back the pointer. And thankfully, the code you had written is there when you re-open the level.

Visuals

7 Billion Humans looks slick and polished overall. The cutscenes have a cartoony charm to them while the programming user interface is well-designed with big buttons that do what you’d expect. Seeing the human workers waddle around obeying the code you wrote is an amusing concept by itself, but the character designs really get to you with those big eyes staring straight into your soul as you accidentally hit play once more to see your workers throw themselves into a shredder. . .

Audio

Most of the soundtrack consists of calming music that will help you focus on the tasks at hand. The title screen and cutscenes offer more uplifting music. The sound effects are fairly standard, with management talking in garbled up sounds, and workers emitting a squeal once they fall into a bottomless pit.

A neat addition to the game is the fact that you can find the full soundtrack under settings from the very start.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a puzzle game and you like the concept of coding, 7 Billion Humans is going to offer you hours of fun. I enjoyed myself while trying to figure out how to make my workers complete management’s latest assignment. Seeing a working solution in action is immensely satisfying. And don’t be worried if you don’t know much coding. The game will teach you all about its concepts. Moreover, the fundamental problem-solving skills you’ll develop when solving 7 Billion Humans are universal and can be applied in various puzzle-solving situations. However, don’t be fooled into thinking this is going to teach you how to code by itself. In the end, it is still a game. A game I can fully recommend to all puzzle enthusiasts.