Game EXP: Human Within (MQ2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Human Within through Keymailer, a third-party company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game key was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that it be played, and content be created.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Human Within
Release Date: April 3, 2025
Systems: SteamVR, Meta Quest 2/3/3S
Publisher: Signal Space Lab
Developer: Signal Space Lab, Actrio Studio
Time Spent: 2 Hours 5 Minutes
Playthrough Videos on YouTube

Human Within is several things.  It's first and foremost a science fiction movie.  It's also an interactive science fiction movie.  It's an interactive science fiction movie where you decide certain key plot points, creating branching paths, but like all good time travel theories, there are only a set number of possible results from your choices.  And because this is a video game tucked within a story, there is only so much the player can affect during the course of the story, often leading to the feeling that, regardless of what you're doing, your choices have no real or tangible outcome on the story.  Human Within is also an independent video game made on an independent film budget, albeit one that received funding from several government grant foundations, yet it still feels like an independent film.

The story follows a pair of sisters, Linh and Nyla Gray, two cyber engineers working for a company leading the advancement of human and cybernetic integration.  The player takes on the role of Linh, who, at the beginning of the story, is in a semi-catatonic state while hooked up to a series of computers via a headset/neural link device.  The story is told in a combination of present day and flashbacks, often where, as Linh, you make decisions that affect the overarching story and likely, how the story resolves, ending on one of five possible endings.  In the present, your primary purpose is to assist Linh's sister, Nyla hack into various systems around the company you work for and throughout a futuristic and interconnected Berlin.

The hacking scenes are usually carried out by Nyla, but at pre-scripted times, Linh will automatically step in to break through an encrypted firewall.  When this happens, a 3D voxel loading bar appears in front of the player, and you have to bring your hand/controller up to the loading bar to "fill" the bar, which 50% of the time results in being blocked by a firewall.  You then enter a 3D space where you connect six-sided blocks with different connecting dot patterns to, what feels like to me, complete a circuit.  What I found interesting during these puzzle scenes was that there was no timer, no urgency on the part of the Linh to complete the hack, apart from what the player brings into the puzzle.  On one hand, this creates a no-lose scenario, so there's no fear of a Game Over screen and having to start over.  On the other hand, without a sense of urgency, it makes the stakes feel so much less significant.  Although I never noticed it stated in-game, my justification for there being no timer was that Linh's perception within this puzzle room was warped compared to reality.  So what might have taken me five minutes in-game to complete would have only been 0.5 seconds in the real world.  You know, Inception.

The other puzzles I encountered were what I would describe as a lite escape room from a low-resolution and colored staticky room.  In these instances, it was a lot harder to justify not knowing where exactly to look and what to do.  In-story, these types of puzzles would come about when Linh, while still hooked up to all the computers, would use cameras and data about a room, then place herself within that room to look and scan for objects and/or objectives.  While on one hand, it was nice to be able to move around, normally being stuck inside a computer looking at upwards of 13 screens, it was also disorienting being in a pixel/voxelated environment while trying to figure out what I could click on to interact with.  These types of puzzles, I couldn't find a way to justify with in-game logic, having spent 18 minutes trying to look around three different rooms to know what to do.

Some of my getting lost within these spaces could have been because I was playing the game with the French language track with English subtitles instead of the default English language.  I first started the game in English, but then thought that the French might actually be Quebecois since the developers had received a grant from the Canada Media Fund and Investissement Quebec; but no, it's confirmed France French from Conklederp.  The point being, while watching what was happening and trying to read the English subtitles at the same time, I know there were times when I lost what was being said.  I guess that's partly my own fault, and also not, since how was I supposed to know that I could use a temperature control panel to remotely hack into a service robot, let alone what that kind of a panel would look like in this space.  Excuses, I know.

I think I'm ultimately mixed with Human Within.  I enjoyed the novelty of playing an interactive movie in a virtual space, kind of like a video visual novel, or a lite-Choose Your Own Adventure.  I wish that there had been more choices and more for the player to do.  I know that narratively, there needed to be a reason for Linh to be hacking into things, and during segments where I was clicking on different things, none of Nyla's responses were canned or repeated, so that felt nice.  Maybe if the firewall cube puzzles had been more varied, maybe with different shapes instead of "Oh, here's another more complicated cube puzzle," but I guess it might make sense if it's a firewall in the same computer system that runs throughout Berlin.  That being said, with all of the choices that could lead to one of the five possible outcomes, part of me is morbidly curious to make wildly inconsistent choices for Linh to see what happens, but I don't feel so motivated to immediately jump back in.  Take that as you will.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

So I Cracked the Moon