Last updated on January 16th, 2026 at 02:53 am
Human Resource Machine – Education Game Review
Human Resource Machine is a Education/Puzzle game from Experimental Gameplay Group, first launched in 1st June 2016.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 408+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Human Resource Machine Stand Out
Program little office workers to solve puzzles. Be a good employee! The machines are coming… for your job.
- Included in the 'App Store Best of 2016'.
- A worldwide App Store Editors’ Choice.
- Winner of Excellence in Innovation by the International Mobile Gaming Awards.
Human Resource Machine is a puzzle game for nerds. In each level, your boss gives you a job. Automate it by programming your little office worker. If you succeed, you'll be promoted up to the next level for another year of work in the vast office building. Congratulations!
Don't worry if you've never programmed before – programming is just puzzle solving. If you strip away all the 1's and 0's and scary squiggly brackets, programming is simple, logical, beautiful, and something that anyone can understand and have fun with! Are you already an expert? There will be extra challenges for you.
From the creators of World of Goo and Little Inferno. Have fun! Management is watching.
REVIEWS:
“Amidst the trend of instant gratification that the internet and gaming as a whole has perpetuated, having a game that both excels in its puzzles and also challenges your wider perception of it is commendable, and makes Human Resource Machine exponentially essential.”
- Touch Arcade 5/5
“Sometimes a game catches you by surprise. Be it with its ingenuity, its style, or its sense of humor. Other times a game catches you with all three, like Human Resource Machine.”
- Gamezebo 9/10
"Human Resource Machine Could Be The App Of The Year”
- Mobile n’ Apps
This Education game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Human Resource Machine is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 11th December 2018
Recent improvements include:
Updated for devices with wider aspect ratios.
Download & Availability
Human Resource Machine is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Human Resource Machine on App Store
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:
Best ios game to us in many years. If you are a coder there's no reason you will not be interested in it.
Whenever we restart cause our code didnt work the numbers always restart and it makes us very mad so can yall update it so it doesnt do it cause it makes us restart a whole level. The game is still worth it its just that it gets us annoyed a little and pretty frustrated cause its hard.
Wonderful game. Great way tonelagem procedure thinking too. (Ive even assigned it as HW as a way to build familiarity with procedural thinking and implication. Most programming tools just teach you commands and dont help people develop thinking habits they need to program.) Great game if you like logic puzzles and games with character.
-good puzzles addressing real fundamental programming tasks and logic -compelling visual design, really smooth graphics and game dynamics -recursive hilarity we would much rather support these guys than buy that $7 latte.
We were able to progress through the levels, but we still felt like we were at a low level the entire time.
We share the developers' cynicism. We are in a mindless bureaucratic march toward nothing. But if we're going to waste our life staring at screens, solving meaningless puzzles that have already been solved by someone else and are solvable much more easily by computer programs that have already been builtif we are to be boxed in by machines that quantify our every moveit's at least nice when the pointless puzzles are challenging. So thanks. Maybe we should go outside and play now.
We're totally frustrated but delighted to be challenged, so we send this message to the developers with a grin: F-you, you evil, sadistic, geniuses! Well done! This kind of logical, linear thinking makes our brain sweat. How awesome that playing can teach a new way of thinking — kind of empowering, lots of fun. We can see how this can be applied to communication.
This game is pretty awesome, if we do say ourselves. Having prior knowledge to coding helped us with the first few levels, but had to look for help after a few levels. We recommend having a small amount of coding knowledge before playing so you wont get completely stuck. And like the app says, because of it difficulty, its better if you play this ages 9 and over. Soy out.
The game is really fun but seriously not much levels so hard to figure out what to do instructions kind of hard to understand NO UPDATES WHAT THE WHAT.
Got this game years ago aspiring but got stuck. We remember the soundtrack being incredible and now we cant seem to get it to play in game. Either way we learned that zero has a value.
Fun puzzle game for exercising coding knowledge, but doesn't offer a lot of help to actually teach you how to code. Once you get a problem that is too difficult to figure out alone there isn't any help for the user to learn. We basically have to go look up the answers on youtube and pick apart the explanation so we can understand what it is we're doing in the game. Although, our understanding from impressions left on the internet by professional coders, looking up your coding needs on github and other sources is a totally normal thing to do no matter how far along in your career you are. So maybe the true lesson here is that a successful coder is resourceful and adaptable. Review coming from someone whose entire coding experience is playing a few levels of swift on the ipad and an obsessively decorated myspace profile in 2005.
We want to play this game when we go to bed. We sleep on our side. But the game flips over and doesnt respect iOS orientation lock. Its a good game but this ruins the fun when you cant play it sideways.
Update: Within 10 minutes of our last post we figured out that the sound ONLY works with wired headphones or Bluetooth speakers and headphones. Minor annoyance but livable. 5/21/2020 Just downloaded and we were excited to play, but theres no sound. We couldnt find any settings menu within the game, and we made sure that our phones volume was on and working with music and other apps, and that Bluetooth was off. Im using an iPhone XR. This could be a one-off issue since we cant find it referenced anywhere else online, but we do remember that the sequel, 7 Billion Humans, had the same issue on Steam. For 7 Billion Humans after a few days to a week the sound started working on that one, not sure why or how. Hopefully its the same scenario with Human Resource Machine on iOS, but this is just annoying, since you would think that including sound on a game wouldnt be so complex.
Lying on our side causes the game to rotate (even with rotation lock enabled in the control center).
For a company that so clearly cares about engineering its disappointing to see them omit such an obvious function.
Looking to upgrade your phone? Goodbye save data. This application doesnt integrate its save with iCloud backup or Game Center. Probably wont play it until this is fixed.
This simulates a simple CPU. There is only one register and no subroutine calls. The worst feature is if you write a partial program and did not run it, you could lose the program if this app gets deactivated by ios when sitting in the background.
We wish this game would let us stop the numbers from changing at each attempt Programming is already abstract enough, please allow for static numbers.
This game challenges you more than it teaches you. It gives a task and doesnt assist in the solution at all. If youre wanting to learn programming for the first time, this game discourages you more than it assists your growth. It seems this game is for programmers that want small challenges.
This game is great but progress is not saved in phone backups. Every time we get a new phone we have to start over. Its so annoying and we hate playing the same levels.
We made a script which multiplies two inputs, the way the level tells you to. The script gives the correct output, but the manager requests a zero on the last pair, regardless of what said pair is. We are stuck.
We love the game itself. But we would love to change the language from the English to Korean a lot if possible. We bought this outside Korea.
They need to have locking screen orientation. The minimal basic options are poor. The game itself is decent. Its polished and we appreciate the hard work designing a friendly debugger. The optimizations are the main fun of the game, the levels and instructions themselves are reasonable. Polish and design 5/5. Basic quality of life features 3/5. Puzzles and gameplay 4/5. Price and platform implementation 3/5. Story 4/5.
We were looking for a game that would help with coding. This game helps with some weird slantwise stuff that might help with logical thinking sometimes, but otherwise its no good. The way the screen is set up, its frustrating trying to look at your program or make changes; we try scrolling and Ive selected something, now its out of place and we have to figure out where it came from before trying to scroll through the obnoxiously long line of code necessary because we cant use normal if-then sorts of statements. As a game, its mildly funny too, so thats cool.
The game is great but please make it support iCloud sync between multiple iOS devices.
These puzzles are way too smart for us.
We're stuck at level 9 because we've been looking for the relationship between input and output. We thought it was an arithmetic sequence or a proportional sequence relationship, or something like that. But after we checked the strategy, we realized that it turned out to be a simple relationship like A-B and B-A. We feel like our IQ has been insulted. Telling the player directly what the relationship between input and output is is much better than telling the player a test case and letting him guess.
We would give this game 8 stars if only it would allow us to continue our progress on a new phone. Instead we have to re-solve all of the challenge problems, which just kills our motivation to pick it back up. WHY doesnt this sync to iCloud for saves, or at the very least why arent the save games included in our iTunes backup.
We are a non-coder that enjoys the idea of coding. This is a fantastic game. Very hard to get the optimum score on each level (we.e., the most efficient / effective program) so even after you win theres very often more to do if you choose to go for a gold standard.
This is an amazing game and spend the money if you will only play it on the iPad. If you try to use an iPhone, theres an annoying bug where is nags you constantly to rotate away from landscape mode. Also, the support link has no support contact that we could read on the iPhone. Lots of FAQ about steam but no iOS support from the support link. Bad on Apple for approving that metadata. Ill give the developer a pass and 5 stars since the app is good and maybe they didnt realize their support link was supposed to help people get support.
This is a decent game to understand the procedural way machine language works as well as the most rudimentary programming. Sorely needs more levels and functions would be a great addition. But 2 years and the only update was for the new iPhone X line of phones. Very disappointed, so we updated our review from 4 to 2 stars.
Our big complaint is that we cant listen to apple music or audiobook while playing. Sound is not needed for this game. Id like to play the game and listen to what we want.
This is one of our favorite games Ive ever played. Its so clever and so fun, and is a real challenge. Our only complaint is we wish there were more levels so we could play forever! These same people also made a game called World of Goo, which we had blazed through before this game came around, so we knew Human Resources Machine was going to be good before going in. These people can do no wrong.
We love this on the PC and when we saw it on iOS we had to pick it up. Hope to see a sequel or new challenges in the future.
Would like to share progress between iPhone and iPad. Otherwise great.
This game is great for puzzle lovers and is a good intro to code. We agree with others saying more feedback or hints would be useful in case people get stuck. It would also benefit from being able to copy and paste sections of code into other sections rather than the current all-or-nothing approach. Overall adorable and enjoyable to play.
We have seriously never, ever felt prouder to finish a game in our life!!! Some levels felt like torture, yet we cant help ourselves but to dive right back in to complete all the optimization challenges. Cant wait to see what these guys will come up with next.
Love this game! We keep checking back in to see if theyve released a new one but alas.
Ive actually owned this game on Steam for a while, but never felt to much like playing it in the computer. This version is great to solve puzzles on the go. Id recommend a stylus if youre using a phone instead of a tablet though because stuff is fairly small. The game itself starts simply and quickly gets challenging. Optional levels and optimization challenges also add extra difficulty for those who are geniuses. Overall its a good experience for the thinker. Worth $5 in our opinion.
We downloaded and played straight through all weekend, Im straight addicted to this game.
This game is for critical thinkers. This is not a puzzle game to waste idle time, it requires focus and analysis. If youre looking for something to stroke your ego look elsewhere. Best puzzle game in the store in 2017, no doubt.
Guys please make it iPhone X compatible.
This game was featured as the game of the day but it has no support for the iPhone X. The game is great and the idea is super original just please update it to support iPhone X. Thanks.
This game is amazing. Faintly cute and extremely clever and witty, this game is a mind-boosting treat. Though challenging, once you solve a puzzle, you feel so satisfied with yourself! We highly recommend this game.
We love this game. Instantly addicted. BUT, now that we got to the multiply level, we can't get a multiplier command to appear on the list. edit OMG. That's the puzzle. Well done.
The design and production quality of this game are top-notch. The levels start out simple but get very challenging, plus there are optional levels and optimizations that really bend your noodle if you want to take them on. It basically teaches you how a computer CPU works at its lowest level, and how to program it at that level (assembly). This is great knowledge that even many professional programmers lack these days. Highly recommend if you like logical problem solving.
Simply amazing! We feel like we robbed somebody only paying a dollar for this… It's worth much much more!! Then again, we did do a lot of virtual work here for a fake corporation for free, so we'll call it even. We're not sure we'll ever be able to get their prime number program operational though!!! Thanks though guys this game was great. We hope you keep developing apps. The fireplace one is also great too- but this one is our favorite.
We have experience in Matlab and a little of Arduino but find this to still be a great and fun challenge. It teaches the basics of programming in a very intriguing way.
Not only is this a great game put you are practicing a lot of the principles behind programming, without getting caught up syntax.
It's a great game, just wish you could turn sound and music off so you can listen to your own music.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.9
- Size: 132.50 MB
- iOS: 8.0 or later
- Languages: CS, DA, NL, EN, FR, DE, HU, IT, JA, KO, NB, PL, PT, RU, ZH, ES, SV, ZH, TR
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Experimental Gameplay Group
Last updated: 11th December 2018 | Genre: Education, Puzzle | Developer: Experimental Gameplay Group