Enhance Games next title, Humanity now has an official release date of May 16th, 2023. The game first announced way back in 2019 and was featured again in February this year during State of Play, is an interesting puzzle game to say the least, where you play as a Shiba Inu who controls a large crowd of humans following behind. Alongside today’s release date announcement was a new trailer which is equally enjoyable to the likes of the quirky game. The trailer recreates some Japanese PlayStation ads created from the PS1 and PS2 era, with an adorable Shiba Inu interfering and trolling a few humans.
Humanity has been described as a mix of Lemmings, Echochrome, Intelligent Cube and PaRappa the Rapper. In blog post directly from PlayStation, the game is described where,“you control that glowing shiba inu, placing commands on the ground for a giant marching horde of people to follow. Make them turn, jump, float through the air, swim, climb, etc., all to reach the goal (or goals) in each stage. The game gradually introduces these mechanics and more, combining them with each other and new elements to ramp up the challenge the further you go.” As well in the blog post, the question was posed as to why a Shiba Inu, or rather, “So why the doggo?” was chosen as the game’s mascot. “The dev team explored a couple of different interface approaches, from a more simple, generic cursor to having one of the humans take the lead. But considering the relationship between dogs and humans in real life and the story we wanted to tell, it just felt natural. If the humans in the game have lost their own will, mind, and soul, who would they want to follow without questioning it? A dog! When we tried it out, everything clicked.”
Amongst the new trailer, Humanity highlighted the build your own puzzles feature, with endless amount of possibilities to experiment with. Humanity will also have a VR mode for both PSVR and PSVR 2 users.
One of the more exciting news to come out of the release date announcement is that PlayStation Plus Extra subscribers will be getting the game Day 1. Sony has been experimenting with Day 1 exclusives since last year, starting with Stray for Plus subscribers. Much recently, Meet Your Maker was made available.
Enhance Game’s is more recently known for the widely acclaimed Tetris Effect which released in 2018.