Last updated on January 16th, 2026 at 11:16 pm
Homo Machina – Adventure Game Review
Homo Machina is a Adventure/Puzzle game from ARTE France Apps, first launched in 17th May 2018.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 827+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Homo Machina Stand Out
“… an amazing and intriguing game that's unlike anything you've played before.”
Pocket gamer
“Darjeeling has really captured the authenticity of Kahn's work”
Toucharcade
Homo Machina is a puzzle game inspired by the work of avant-garde scientist Fritz Kahn. Set off on a crazy journey to solve the surreal puzzles of Homo Machina and learn about the internal working of the human body, represented as a gigantic 1920s factory.
In this narrative puzzle, players are plunged into an ingenious system of nerves, vessels and valves. The aim is to help the body function correctly in about thirty steps or so throughout the entire day. Each scene breaks down daily acts, such as opening your eyes, chewing a toast or listening to music, through seamless navigation and intuitive and inventive gameplay.
Fritz Kahn, a pioneer of infographics and popular science, came up with easy to understand analogies to enable people to improve their understanding of the human body. By combining old school design with a contemporary influence, Homo Machina delights with its clever dialogue between the absent-minded director at the helm of the body-machine and Josiane, his diligent secretary, encouraging players to put to task the armada of workers to get the incredible factory up and running.
After Californium, Homo Machina is the new video game created by Darjeeling production. It was edited and co-produced by ARTE, European culture digital and TV channel, and Feierabend.
This Adventure game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Homo Machina is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 18th December 2018
Recent improvements include:
V.1.5.6
- Bugs fixes for russian version
- Best mobile Game – Game Connection, San Fransisco 2018
- Best mobile Game – Silver Lovie Award 2018
- Best mobile Game – Ping Awards 2018
Official nominee:
- Best audio/visual accomplishment – Pocketgamer Mobile Games Award 2018
- Gamers voice award – SXSW 2018 Austin
Download & Availability
Homo Machina is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We come back to this often for a lovely little romp through art and imagination. More people should play and experience this little adventure. It's so heartful and well crafted, and well worth the asking price for a memory.
Very adorable puzzle game with no hand holding except at the end wink.
We digged the style. Some of the puzzle are tricky to figure out what to do, but we guess thats what they wanted. The music level was a huge pain. Besides that one, we loved it.
Fun game to play. Great artwork style, music, and hint of a love story. We finished it in somewhere around an hour or less. We could see this game to easily have more stories with different scenarios. Its worth playing, but ends too quickly.
We played this game a lot and we got a new phone and forgot the name and spent weeks trying to find it.
This game is truly wonderful, a bit tricky to understand at first, but with enough fiddling about you get the hang of it. The story, art, mechanics, and just general flavor of the game is perfect, our only complaint is that its too short.
This game has great puzzles, and a good story. Its not to long but worth a try if you like puzzle games. This game is best with a headset on.
This is a great game, command with praise from Chinese players.
Love the concept. Love the artwork. Love the mini puzzles. Its a great way to pass the time.
This is a really fun, cute game. Its not incredibly challenging, but we have a lot of fun playing it, the animation doesnt get old.
A true original, this game is an example of a mobile game holding its own.
A beautifully thought out game with creativity everywhere you look. The medical student in us dived at the chance to play this game, and we could not have been happier that we did. The soundtrack for was also amazing, we watched all the credits just to listen to the music. Wonderful game, only flaw is that we wish it was longer.
We enjoyed playing this game. Touching, lovely, kind, cute:) Thank you.
We wish there was more! And for free Im in a family that doesnt spend money on apps and games and we can just imagine it being a full on game and its free and many other kids like us will be able to play but other than that it was amazing.
There is so much we love about this game! The concept is great, but the art and music is something to enjoy. We love the 1930s vibe and we wanna play it again.
Such a beautiful game Art Deco style. Really fun and the animations on the little workers are amazing although theyre made of such minimal blots of colors. We love the music and the quirky storyline. The time-stamped social hierarchies made into a body corporation was a bit of a clich, but that didnt really bother us. We were in for the experience and was amazed at all the visuals and executions of the puzzles. We would dig more works by these creators. We love interactive storytelling apps, and we feel like this fits into that category. 5 stars for us.
We dont usually leave a review on any mobile games, but we felt that this one deserved it. It was short, but the interesting mechanics and pleasing art style made it very enjoyable.
So we got this game free while during the pandemic and with everything going on it was really nice to take some time and just do some puzzles. Thank you for that. We liked the story, maybe a sequel where youre the woman in the date going though her day and into the date. And what we really liked was its a blend of folksy, steam punky and (we wonder if anyone would understand) this anime we really like called Cells At Work. LOL Anyway, pretty awesome game.
While this game is short, it is also so wonderfully creative. We enjoyed every minute playing it and really had to figure out what we needed to do. There are no hints so trial and error was the only way through. It was not so difficult, though, that we could not finish the game. Five stars for one of the most creative and imaginative games we've ever played.
As an avid puzzler, this game is a top notch absolutely unique puzzle that takes serious thought to solve as well as an absolutely one of a kind story to match it. There are no hints, no crafty pointing arrows to help you solve the puzzle, and that makes it a rating of 10 for us. If it were not for the mention on the apps game page, giving it a nudge of publicity, we would have missed this game. We could never have known about it through some psychic ability. We were missing out on something truly special so to the developers as well ss the marketing team on the app store a huge THANK YOU. This kind of puzzler is a fanciful, fun yet thought provoking, mid to difficult experience game. There are no in app purchases. Bravo! And now that we have been introduced to such a phenomenal game developer, arte, we expect soon to own their entire selection, we cant wait, but one win at a time and more to look forward to. By the way, we do not write reviews, but this one puzzle game is intriguing enough to warrant kudos. It would have been a disservice to the developers, designers, puzzle creators and storytellers to not do so. Congratulations, to everybody involved, New fan for life.
Nothing more to say. The story, the drawings, the concept, the realization, all is amazing. And if you have kids, they will say AGAIN ! People say its short, but its not really short. You need to consider this is hand drawn and hand animated, so its really more like a pop up book or a classic cartoon than a modern video game. Its cute and we want to do it 2 or 3 times to look at the exquisite craftsmanship and details.
Are you playing this game right now? No?! What are you even doing!? Download this NOW.
This game has great puzzles, its a creative idea, and the art is very cool, but we wish it were longer. Please make more like this.
It was fun but we agree with some of the other reviewers. Would've been nice if the gameplay lasted longer. However, since we had fun playing it we're still giving 5 stars. It was worth the $2.99 that we paid for it.
This game was awesome we just wish they couldve made it a little longer.
Charming game. A little on the short side, but unlike anything Ive seen before.
We just finished the game, and wanted it to go on more! In all seriousness, a second day would be appreciated to explore more organs and bodily functions. Please, please, please add another day.
We wish there was more to but thats here nor there. The puzzles are not bad only one we did not like much was the nerve one . Other then that good game music and all.
Overall we loved the game, enough to even rate in(we never rate games) but we just wish that it was a bit longer :).
What a delightful hour we just spent on this game. Considering it was designed la Fritz Kahn, we were not surprisingly reminded very much of the film Metropolis at the beginning. The dialogue was charming and witty. The mechanics of the body were enjoyably complex. Just when we were getting the hang of it, though, it was over, hence the missing star. We want more.
This game is stylishly designed, engrossing, and based around a very cool concept. We had a lot of fun playing it, and just when we felt it was just getting started, and we were comfortably in the rhythm of the games mechanics, then it was over! We really do feel like this has potential to go many more places, and we would gladly stick around for the ride! We hate giving only 4 stars, but they are definitely to cover the experience, just couldnt justify the 5th with it being so short-lived. That said, thank you devs for running with such an interesting take on the inner workings of the human body, we are going to be analyzing everything we do from now on wondering what the little people keeping us functional are up to.
If u bored and u got something to waste in a video game we would recommend this one cuz it will give u around 50 minutes of fun and its like a puzzle.
Its totally worth the price for the entertainment of it alone. Our only opinion was that the game seemed to be shorter than we expected. Not that it should be endless but a few more body functions would have been cool Buy this game anyway cause it was very well put together and these guys worked hard on it. You can tell just from the opening credits.
We love the concept. They did a great job at executing it. But what they called level we felt was half of a level. In all a great game.
Until we got to the sound section. Trying to sync up the music was infuriating. It seemed like we had the lines matching, but the game didnt seem to register it. Trying to watch the lines as they moved to match them up gave us a headache and started to make us sick due to it moving too fast. We have been playing video games for 30 years, so fast animations and sounds arent something Im not used to. We want to continue this game; it seemed like a unique experience. But, man, that section killed it for us.
First of all, the dialogue, ,artwork, and sound is fantastic. That being said we felt that the game lacked a certain substance. First of all, the storytelling and gameplay is very railroady, or to put it into other words there is very little freedom in the game. The gameplay constrains the player to follow thru with a singular solution. Now this isnt necessarily a bad thing. However the puzzles are not challenging enough for this and paired with the extreme brevity of the game, (we finished the game in half an hour), it ends up feeling like so much has been missed. Id rather pay more money for something more substantive than pay any money for gameplay this brief and constraining. Not saying this game doesnt deserve money, as it obviously took a good amount of work to create. But maybe for your next project if you can create something that solves the story and gameplay issues raised (railroady and short) while maintaining the charming quality of the art you guys may have a winner.
We loved the idea of this game and the look of it far more than we actually enjoyed playing it. We were disappointed with the slow pace the game moves at and found ourselves left bored and unchallenged. We also was off put by the fact that ALL the workers seem to be portrayed as white men AND the only woman we see is in the beginning and she is serving a man. All in all, great concept but boring play.
Way too short. It might take 20 minutes max to complete. The idea is nice but we cant recommend it due to how short it is.
Very simple to beat and probably not worth $3 for that reason. Also, all the animated figures are white complexed, its very strange.
Creative game, but it took less than 20 minutes to complete. We assumed we had just finished the introductory first level of the game and then the credits started to roll. Way way too short.
Why are all the workers white and the boss is a white male with a subservient female.
Need clue in offertory step it keep on stuck you for stupid reason.
Tuve que reiniciar tres veces para llegar al segundo ejercicio, se ve interesante pero toralmenr intil la aplicacin.
Uhm…. We mean we guess if you wanna kill 5 minutes and 3 bucks then get it.
As a puzzle fanatic … Im thoroughly disappointed in this game. The child-like interface insults our intelligence and the simple touch-and-play puzzles seem to be designed for a 3rd grader. This game should NOT be marketed as an ADULT puzzler. Apple failed us and improperly suggested this childhood game to us.
We thought it be a more challenging game.
This game was great and adorable! We just wish it was longer.
This is a beautiful game, fun to play, the art is lovely and the gameplay is a fun mix of serious and silly. One problem- we are COMPLETELY STUCK ON THE RADIO WAVES. Ive been fiddling with them off and on for about two hours now, even had a couple other people give it a whack, and no one can fiddle the fiddly bits the right way to play the song! Help.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.5.6
- Size: 568.16 MB
- iOS: 9.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: ARTE France Apps
Last updated: 18th December 2018 | Genre: Adventure, Puzzle | Developer: ARTE France Apps