Human Resource Machine Review

Welcome to your new job! Pick up your employee ID at the front desk and head to the elevator to get right to work. No time to stop and talk, time’s wasting!

Human Resource Machine is another delightful game by Tomorrow Corporation, creators of World of Goo and Little Inferno. In the game, the player must solve puzzles to advance higher and higher up the corporate ladder. The elevator is the level system, and in Human Resource Machine, each level counts as a year spent in the company. In the game, the player is tasked with sorting items from the inbox to the outbox. At first, it seems easy, but as the game goes, more commands will appear.

In level one, the mail room, there are two commands: inbox and outbox. The player drags the commands into a list, and once the list looks like it will solve the puzzle, you can hit the play button at the bottom of the screen to “run the program”. The program can be run as many times as needed, and the player can even back up and “debug” if something doesn’t work out right. And if you run into trouble, don’t worry, there’s a manager overseeing each floor who can be asked for examples or more information. Or just say hello again and get the intro to each level repeated.

As you up the elevator, the puzzles become more complex. Some of the puzzles seemed confusing at first, but having the ability to rotate my phone and read the instructions more clearly helped a lot. It takes a few tries sometimes, but once the inbox is empty and the outbox is correct, it’s time to move to the next floor!

Other commands that come later in Human Resource Machine include adding and subtracting. It might sound like the player needs to know math to be good at this game, but believe me, you don’t. As a dyslexic person who struggles with math, I was still able to complete twelve levels in a fairly short amount of time. If you’re ever faced with a command you don’t understand, drag it to the question mark box underneath the last command to learn more.

Tomorrow Corporation games are always delightful with a tasteful dash of social commentary mixed in. World of Goo and Little Inferno both commented on pollution and climate change, but in a way that was not preachy but more thought-provoking. As the player goes through their games, you start to feel immersed in their worlds. Even though the games are fairly simple, there’s a charm there that always pulls the player in.

The art style of Tomorrow Corporation is distinct and fairly cute. Human Resource Machine is a game that can be found on Steam and ports amazingly to IOS or Android. There are several levels, and occasionally there are additional challenge levels that fork off from the main game. The player can venture to the challenge levels and easily return to the main game levels as well as return to previous levels. This is a game worth its price tag and what mobile games that aren’t RPG’s should strive toward. It may get frustrating at times, trying to figure out just how to place the commands to solve the puzzle, but solving them gives the player a great sense of accomplishment. There seems to be a story going on in the background as well, and you will only learn more the higher you go.