Humanity Is a Surrealist Spin on Lemmings in Intriguing PS5, PS4 Demo | Push Square

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To be frank, when Humanity was announced back in 2019, we weren't really sure what we were looking at. A series of delays made it all the more mysterious. It was only with the recent reintroduction during February's State of Play that things began to click into place. The game comes from Tetris Effect studio Enhance Games and experimental Japanese team tha ltd., and having now played the limited time demo, we can at last tell you what it's all about.

Essentially, this strange game shares its core concept with Lemmings. In each abstract level, it's your job to guide a stream of people, walking in unison, to the goal. You control a dog (a shiba inu, to be precise) that can literally bark commands at the mindless humans, ordering them to change direction, perform jumps, and more to make it to the exit. That's kind of it.

It's a simple idea, but the hundreds of people onscreen and three-dimensional levels make it appear more complex. Fortunately, the demo introduces things nicely, giving you access to different commands as you progress through the 10 stages. We will say, however, that the difficulty is somewhat inconsistent; the fourth level, Loop the Loop, is a jump above the previous three, and isn't the only spike among the selection. Of course, this is just a demo, so we'd expect the challenge curve will be gentler in the full game.

The 10 levels do at least give you a good idea of how Humanity will use its simple mechanics to construct some very interesting and surprisingly tough puzzles. Optional collectible figures named Goldy, fans that can blow the humans away, blocks they can push along, and more all add small but effective layers to the design. Some levels make getting from A to B a real head-scratcher, but