Day 251 - Human Body
WTF, Educational, No Music ·
Skeeter’s Take:
I’m honestly baffled by the human body. I’m also honestly baffled by Human Body.
Where do I even begin with this game? I guess the simplest way to describe Human Body is it’s sort of like an elementary school pop quiz, but made by an alien.
The questions are all human body centric, but seem like they were taken directly from a 3rd grade textbook:
These questions are presented in the strangest way, and certainly not in a way I would present them to 3rd graders.
The background is a pixel art close up of an artist’s rendition of red blood cells in a bloodstream. The questions are all given to you by some strange colored bald kid wearing glasses and the same fish/Jesus shirt.
You harvest earn hearts (which the game hilariously refers to as “grass” on the end of day screen) for answering questions correctly, and 10 of those hearts can be exchanged to play a game. The “game” is “Move The Lung Around A Black Screen While Red Dots Chase You And Then You Earn Brains If You Don’t Get Hit By Said Red Dots”:
These brains can then be exchanged to “Upgrade body”.
And boy, I laughed so hard when four sparkling lungs appeared in the pixelated blood stream:
As far as I can tell, the change is purely cosmetic. This theory was given weight when I had the exact same question I had already answered the previous day.
Speaking of the questions - the core gameplay mechanic - they tend to repeat. Sometimes you’ll get the same question back to back. But the best thing about these elementary level questions?
You don’t even have to answer them correctly.
Upon choosing the incorrect answer, the game prompts you to “Try Again!”, in which you can only select the correct answer. Once you’ve been forced to choose the correct answer, the game rewards you with some hearts as if you answered correctly.
Not to mention, the true and false questions hold a lot less weight when every single question is a 50/50.
This is one of those games that feels different. It stands out in its insane nature amongst a lot of other things we have played. As Sam has mentioned numerous times before, we have done a daily review project very similar to this one in the past. Seeing as today would make the total online internet games we’ve played about 616 different games, I feel like the context is important when I say I have never played anything quite like Human Body. Every decision is baffling to me. I stared in disbelief numerous times at my screen. “This has to be a joke”, I kept thinking. But Human Body doesn’t have an ounce of sarcasm in it. It is exactly what it is - a chaotic quiz for demented alien children to learn the basics of the human body. It teaches about safe lung safety (red dots and lungs DO NOT MIX). It allows fun body modifications - very cyberpunk of Human Body!
What I’m trying to say is, this game hits. It hits because it’s so bizarre. It probably hits because I’ve seen so many cookie cutter games that are near identical to each other. I’ve played quiz games before, but I’ve never played Human Body.
It’s like watching a Neil Breen movie. You don’t really know what’s going on and the decisions are so out of left field and sometimes a little bit scary. All the same, you can’t help but keep watching and laughing.
Recommend: Yes
Replay Percentage Chance: 50%
Time Played: 10 Minutes
Sam’s Take:
Hello readers. I would like to officially declare this review project, Flash Forward Reviews, a success. In my eyes, we only need to find two games for the project to be successful, one that is unexpectedly excellent, and one that is unexpectedly unhinged. For the first, we randomly found DUSTRANGER, a completely random pick that was so legitimately fun that I posted it in my work chat in a desperate attempt for people to play it. We’ve had a few close calls at the baffling game. At the time it felt like Mammoth Hunting might be the one, but in retrospect, I think our fucked up Newgrounds-poisined brains may have found that funnier than most people would. The Lion King is also a close contender, but it is just a badly written adaptation of The Lion King movie with funny gifs and sounds. It’s hilarious, but I can explain it.
Human Body is the only game we’ve played where I could equally believe that the creator was a 12 year old who had only eaten Pixie Stix for the past decade, or that the game is a subversive Harmony Korine project. Skeeter already explained how it works, but I’d like to treat you to a screenshot of all the upgrades:
Amazing. Especially the walking skeleton at the bottom there.
I want you to try to make a game right now. Go on, do it. Stop reading this review and go learn to use a gaming engine, then enroll in Second City’s comedy classes, spend enough time there to realize you no longer think anything is funny, and therefore have become horribly unfunny yourself, come to the realization that the reason they have celebrity comedian photos all over isn’t because they actually jump-started their careers, but because they churn through enough people to use the lucky ones as a marketing gimmick, come back home finish that game, and guess what, IT’S NOT EVEN CLOSE TO AS FUNNY AS HUMAN BODY.
Human Body is impossible. It is a gift. Play it now. Send it to everyone you know. If these reviews only accomplish one thing, I hope it’s that more people play Human Body.
I didn’t even mention that all the alerts the game sends you are done through the browser UI!
It’s free, you can play it in your browser, please please please play it please.
Recommend: YESYESYESYESYES
Replay Percentage Chance: PavGames has like… 10 other games HOLY SHIT%
Time Played: 20 Minutes
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