7 Billion Humans review - "A brilliant game of workforce manipulation and coding"

If you don't like learning things while you play then you should definitely avoid Seven Billion Humans. But if you like amazingly designed puzzle games with an interesting theme, something to say, and a brilliantly intelligent core mechanic, you're going to love most of what this one has to offer.

There are a few niggles in the transfer to mobile, especially if you're going to be playing on a smaller screen, but for the most part everything runs pretty darn smoothly. It holds your hand just the right amount, but leaves the door open for massive amounts of experimentation.

Hugh, man

The game is set in the aftermath of a robot takeover, and you're playing an overseer at a factory that employs all of the humans left in the world. They've just been given jobs, and it's up to you to tell them what to do.

Telling them what to do involves programming some code into another chunk of the screen. You drag and drop instructions and your workers will follow them to the exact letter. To start off with that isn't too much of a challenge - you'll need all of your workers to do the same thing.

The deeper you get into the experience though, the more you're going to have to think. You'll need to use if statements and programming loops to send your workers to different places and do different things.

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These aren't little challenges you're taking on - the levels are going to take a good while to figure out. There's a bit of trial and error, but it's part of figuring out how everything works. And when you get to that place it's a damn good feeling.

Sometimes things can get a little fiddly on a smaller-screened device, but since this isn't an action game it's more of an annoyance than anything that actually has an impact on the mechanics. You'll have to re-order or delete your programs when you make a mistake though, which further highlights the issue.

For all the chunkiness and brain-smarts, there's still a good deal of charm here. You're going to laugh out loud at some of the writing, and the gloomy aesthetic of the workplace captures the irony of the joyous statements of the bosses.

Billions

Sure, this one's a port, and it doesn't make the move over to mobile perfectly, but it's still really, really good. And the fact it fits in your pocket is really a pretty impressive achievement. There are problems, but none of them detract from that entertaining centre.

If you're a fan of Tomorrow Studios' other work, then picking this one up is a no-brainer. For everyone else, so long as you don't have that aforementioned resistance to education, it's definitely worth picking up.