Humanity is an action-puzzle game that puts you in the role of a Shiba Inu trying to rebuild mankind after its destruction at the hands of a rogue AI, and it launches today on Xbox. If you’ve got Xbox Game Pass or PC Game Pass, you can download and play right now! If you’re not yet familiar with Humanity, check our announcement Xbox Wire post here.

When you’ve got a job as big as single-handedly (paw-edly?) saving the human race, you could probably use a few pointers. We’ve got you covered. Here are seven tips to ensure you start off on the right foot—er, paw.

1. Fixing Your Flow

In each Humanity stage, you place commands on the ground to direct the humans over obstacles and solve puzzles to get them into a goal. The goals fill with light as humans stream into them. But sometimes, you may notice a goal isn’t filling or only fills partially. This means you need a bigger flow of humans to trigger it. Check your route and make sure no people are straying off the path and that you have a steady number walking in.

2. Don’t Worry About Losing Some Humans

Humanity‘s story takes place in a hub area called the Testing Grounds, with AI “Cores” running experiments to rebuild mankind. The humans you lead are made of light—so when they perish, they turn back into light and walk through the door again. So don’t feel bad when you (inevitably!) lose a few to cliffs or falling blocks or weapons. The only human-shaped characters you should be worried about losing are the bonus Goldy, which unlock game progression, cosmetics, and more. And for them, consider…

3. Putting Your Humans in a Holding Pattern

The never-ending, always forward-moving line of people doesn’t need to be stressful. If theme parks have taught us anything, putting humans in a queue can save everyone from headaches. Make the queue work for you by directing the humans into a circular or back-and-forth pattern when you need to temporarily hold something safely. It’s perfect for ensuring you don’t lose any bonus Goldy mid-stage.

4. Use Diving for Quick Traversal and Higher Jumps

At the end of the game’s Prologue, you learn a very important technique—diving. When you hit the jump button in mid-air, you’ll dive into the horde of humans and can traverse among them as if they were water. It’s a great way to travel around stages quickly, but there’s a more advanced trick to it. You can use momentum as you emerge from a dive (pressing jump again) to jump higher than you normally can. This allows you to scale walls that are three blocks high with ease.

5. Make Use of Retry Keep Commands

Not long into Story Mode you’ll unlock the ability to Retry a stage but keep the commands you’ve already laid down in place. It’s called Retry Keep Commands, and it’s maybe the most important option when you’re puzzling out a route for the humans to take. Because if you realize you’ve made a mistake that there’s no time to correct, you can simply reset the flow of humans with Retry Keep Commands and make fixes (you can also optionally use Retry Clear Commands to clear the stage entirely).

6. Stuck? Check the Solution Video

Humanity is a puzzle game; sometimes you might need a hint—a push in the right direction. We didn’t want you to get stuck on a puzzle. Select Solution Video from the pause menu and watch as much or as little of the clip as you want. It won’t spoil how to get the Goldy though. That’s up to you!

7. Want More Humanity? Play Thousands of User-Made Stages

Here’s one of the biggest tips of all. If you love a particular type of puzzle in Humanity or just want to play more even after you finish the story, go to Play Stages from the title screen. Here, you’ll find playlists of user-made levels—almost 10,000 have already been uploaded. Each stage even indicates how difficult it is so you can find stages that meet you at your puzzling skill level. You can search by specific puzzle types and sort by the highest-rated, clear rate, or newest uploads. For launch, we have a specially selected playlist of stages inspired by Xbox.

And there you have it, seven essential tips to get the very best experience from Humanity. It’s available right now on Xbox, and with Game Pass and PC Game Pass. Best of luck saving mankind!!

We are so excited to announce that we’re bringing the award-winning action-puzzle game Humanity to Xbox and Windows 10 on May 30, 2024. Starting today, you can pre-order and pre-load. Even better, it’s launching into Game Pass for console, cloud, and PC. If you love a beautifully crafted, chill puzzle game that’s a little bit platforming, a little bit strategy, has a 90-stage story mode, and a near-endless amount of user-generated content, this one is worth playing.

Become a Dog, Save the World

You wake up as a Shiba Inu and are told that it’s your job to save mankind and lead a horde of ever-forward-marching humans to the light. As you play, you discover that a rogue AI (hmm, timely?) wiped us out, and to rebuild, this same AI is running experiments to reconstruct what makes us all human. That sounds like a heavy burden, but remember, you’re a dog made of light!

At the beginning of the game, a never-ending stream of people emerge from a gate in each stage. They’ll walk forward until you place a command on the ground that they can follow. Command them to turn, jump, jump higher, jump farther, branch, etc. Each stage is an obstacle course, and you’ll need to puzzle out the best path to reach the goal. Direct them towards climbable walls to make them climb, water to swim, fans(!) to make them float through the air, and more.

The great thing about Humanity is that the gameplay constantly evolves throughout the game. Challenges like limited commands, Start Switch puzzles that make you plan everything out first, and you’ll even arm your humans later to fight opposing factions (more about that in a second).

See the tall, statuesque golden idols in these screenshots? They’re called Goldy. Along the way, when you direct your humans over a square occupied by one, they’ll begin walking with your group. Getting Goldy to the goals unlocks some game features, cosmetics (that turn your people into teddy bears, robots, etc.), and more.

Friendly Rivalry Turns into All-Out War

Of course, saving the world can get a little complicated. You’ll soon meet another faction—the Others. These Others are much like your people but do not share the same language or culture. They do want Goldy, though. The friendly rivalry quickly turns more aggressive, and both sides take up arms. But is this an “are we the baddies?” situation? Something to ponder as you play.

Even deeper into the game you meet The Machines—which bring more firepower, turrets, lasers, etc. to the party.

Test Your Skill in Boss Stages

Remember that rogue AI we mentioned that decimated humanity? It’s divided into four Cores. They have different personalities, and each is responsible for rebuilding one aspect of humanity. When you reach the end of each one’s set of challenges, you must destroy them via a final test. Sometimes, it’s reliant on your puzzle-solving skills, but later, these get more action-y—including gigantic boss fights.

An Endless Library of User-Made Stages Awaits

In addition to the 90 stages in story mode, you can also play stages/puzzles made by other players. We hand-curate playlists of the best stages, or you can dive in and search/sort through the massive library (8,700+ stages and counting!) yourself. Users have taken Humanity’s core gameplay and created racing stages, time trials, platforming challenges, and more, remixing things in new and exciting ways.

Make and Share Your Own Stages

Plus, you can create your own stages using the stage creator. We walk you through the basics in a tutorial, then set you and your imagination free to explore. Make your masterpiece and share it with the community. Stages are playable across all platforms!

With visuals and design from celebrated visual designer Yugo Nakamura, a mesmerizing soundscape from Jemapur, and gameplay from tha ltd. and Enhance (Rez Infinite, Tetris Effect: Connected) you will not want to miss this unforgettable puzzle experience. We hope to see you playing on Xbox console, PC, cloud, and with Game Pass on May 30!