Did you watch it? The trailer I embedded up there? Don't read any further if you haven't yet. Seriously, click that play button. Then watch it again. Watch it a third time. Let its bizarre, entrancing, slightly discomforting nature burrow deep into your bones. Notice how these crowds flow like water, yet each individual moves with robotic, lifeless precision. Let the moist, wet words spoken by the narrator soak into your eardrums.
Simply put: it's creepy, right? Not overtly so, but there's something deeply off about it all. And yet there's also a sense of peace and ordered purpose, even when the crowds clash with one another or begin firing at each other.
It looks like a puzzle game, somewhat in the vein of Lemmings, though Japanese development studio tha ltd describe Humanity as a "crowd action game" - whatever that means. Tha ltd isn't a typical developer, either; it has projects that run the gamut from interactive experiences like Humanity to art installations for Kokuyo, a corporation that sells and manufactures various forms of stationery including pencils and notebooks:
There are no announced platforms and only a vague release window of "2018," but I really, really hope we learn more concrete details soon. I want to see Humanity on Xbox One, PS4, PC, Switch, and more in the near future. I don't even know what the objective is, but I'm hypnotized.
There's nothing violent or grotesque about this game, but I find it to be one of the most unsettling things I've watched in recent memory. There's also nothing spectacular or bombastic, but I find it gorgeous and pleasing to view in motion. Maybe seeing both of those perspectives is the point. It is called Humanity, after all.
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