The Humans

Year 1992, I've just freshly installed DOS at home and a friend brings over some floppies with a game where you control a bunch of chubby prehistoric guys. I'm thinking: isn't this just Lemmings, only uglier? Then I spend three hours trying to get a mammoth across a chasm.

The Humans by Imagitec Design is a puzzle game from 1992 that builds on the concept popularized by Lemmings — you've got a group of primitive little characters, you need to get them from point A to point B and survive along the way. The setting is prehistoric: cave people, mammoths, dinosaurs, fire. No complicated plot, just a series of screens with obstacles and riddles.

The key difference from Lemmings is direct control. You're not issuing commands from above, but switching between specific characters and controlling them directly. That sounds like an improvement, but in practice it adds a layer of awkwardness you have to get used to. The characters work together — one holds a torch, another climbs on him, a third jumps across the chasm. Chaining these actions together is the heart of the game. When it clicks, it's elegant. But before it does, you'll spend a fair amount of time watching your homo habilis silently plummet into a pit.

The Humans isn't for everyone, and that's not just a clichéd cop-out. Most players back then shelved it after a few levels with the feeling that Lemmings did it better and more clearly. And they weren't far off. The graphics are functional, not dazzling, and the music — I don't remember it, which says something about how memorable it is. Still, the game has its charm: the emphasis lies in spatial logic and character coordination, not speed or reflexes. Anyone who gets it will find a solid set of brainteasers with an honest difficulty curve.

These days it's a thing for nostalgic veterans and DOS catalog collectors. If you enjoy logic puzzles with prehistoric humor and don't mind controls that take a while to tame, The Humans holds up even after thirty years — at least for an afternoon. You can spin it up in your browser via DOSBox without installation and without losing a flower. Just remember first what it was like to live without autosave.