In a playful caricature of prehistoric humans, The Humans (aptly named) puts the player in control of a tribe of caveman on the verge of extinction. Your job is to help them navigate a world of hostile dinosaurs and other enemy tribes and along the way, “inventing” items, such as clubs, torches and rope.

There are a lot of good things about this game. The graphics are excellent, as are all of the animations. One of my favorites is the cave man walking animation, a very clunky kind of lumbering stomp. Little details like this really make the story come alive. While the foregrounds and characters are all two-dimensional, the backgrounds are three-dimensional, adding depth to the levels.

After finishing each level during which a new item is acquired, a prehistoric newspaper is shown hot off the ... chisel. Or whatever they write with. One such newspaper page, chiseled from stone, shows one of your little human tribesman holding a rope, and the caption reads “MAN ON THE ROPES mankind hangs over newest discovery.” These catchy tag lines add a touch of humor to an already cartoony game. The music is good, with drums and xylophones setting the tone for a prehistoric setting. The sound effects are nice, too, and blend well with the rest of the game.

Enemies range from other humans from a rival tribe — armed with spears, shields and other weapons — to dinosaurs of varying sizes. Some small dinosaurs roll around on the ground, forcing you to jump over them. Others will attack you, and you can fend them off by hitting the arrow keys left and right rapidly. Other larger baddies can kill you very quickly and cannot be killed unless you have a spear. Avoiding these enemies makes the levels more challenging and dangerous.

As for how The Humans plays, it can be best summed up as a puzzle platformer. This game uses an arrow key-based control system and has a side-scrolling perspective. The controls are neat and tidy, meaning you don’t have to reach across your keyboard with arms like an octopus to get things done. The Z, X and C buttons take care of using your items in various ways, the ol’ spacebar makes you jump, and the < and > keys cycle between your cavemen. You can have anywhere from just one human to four or five in a level, with each level having its own goals and a time limit to complete them in. Goals range from getting your cavemen to their huts, to saving some Neanderthal hostages, to carving a rock and thus marking your territory. There are 10 of these levels in each world, and there are eight worlds, which means you have a lot to play through.

However, as many gamers know, quantity is not always a good thing. That is decidedly the case in The Humans. While the puzzles are clever and get you thinking, 80 may be a few too many. Once I found myself seven or eight levels into the second world, I began to see the same things over and over. Find the spear, kill the dino, carve the rock. Sometimes the game would shake things up. Carve the rock, escape the dino, find the spear. However, that just isn’t enough variety for 80 levels.

If you have an incredible attention span, you will thank The Humans for being so long. Otherwise, you’ll probably end up hitting your head against your keyboard. In addition, whenever enemies attack you, they drop your health bar a little. Nothing out of the ordinary here. The bad part is that when you get hit, you don’t flash a few times, become invincible or get knocked back so you can escape. Instead, you get hit by your foe over and over until you die. This becomes frustrating and happens far too often.

All in all, The Humans is fun and creative, but it loses its entertainment value after a while. Soon the interesting puzzles lose their originality, and the whimsical visuals and upbeat music get old. Give the game a try if you are interested, but bear in mind that the game does make you weary quickly. The Humans is about $20 (15 euro), so it isn’t terribly expensive, but I don’t really think it’s worth the money. Rent it or play it at a friend’s house.