Review on the Human Player by Bandai

Hey guys! Recently I’ve been gushing over the Human Player. My favourite part I about the Human Player is how this feels like actual adulting! Unlike most virtual pets, you don’t clean up poop, you don’t have to feed it, and it doesn’t beep at you for attention. Instead, you watch it as your human goes through his/her daily routine. I see it as less of a child’s toy, and more of satire humorous play on being an adult. I don’t know about you, but personally, I love it because of how much I can relate to it as an actual adult!

The gameplay is simple. You basically just watch your Human throughout the day. Like a normal human going thru daily life, your Human could be watching TV, going to school/work, eating lunch (depending on your Human’s personality, he/she could be eating with friends or eating alone), taking the train to go out to town, going shopping, taking the train home, walking home, texting friends, watching TV, taking a bath, doing the dishes, vacuuming the floor, etc. Every time I look at the screen, I see a brand-new animation! it’s fun to watch, and humorous too, because it’s so relatable. There are captions that accompany each animation. It’s more fun if u can understand Japanese, cos the captions explain better what’s going on in each animation. Not to fret though! If you can’t read Japanese, watching the animations alone is good enough!

When you first start the game, you’ll be asked to answer 50 questions, which will determine your Human’s personality. Depending on the answers, your human will be sorted into 1 of 22 quirky personalities. Next, you input their gender and their birth date. You can create multiple Humans on your Human Player, so you can run multiple humans at once! Different personalities do different things. For example, your Human has a lazy personality, you may very well catch him/her snoozing away in class at school! It is interesting to see how each Human’s current activity differs from the rest! You may see some out shopping, while some are at work. At dinner time, you may catch some of your Humans having a meal with friends, while some are dining alone. I’m not sure if age plays a part in determining what your Humans do, but feel free to try creating different Humans at different ages!

It’s an overall low maintenance game, as the human about his daily life without having you to feed/clean/play with it. I absolutely love this aspect of it, because I want the enjoyment of keeping a virtual pet, yet I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of having to care for it at all times (especially when it beeps at me while I’m at work! Ugh!).

At this point, you may be wondering “The game seems to be on auto-pilot. What role do I play in my Human’s life?” So, here’s where YOU come in! Your Human has 3 stats that you are responsible for: Body, Heart, and Intellect. Your job is to keep the stats high at all times! You can determine your character's daily routines by selecting 3 options: Home, Work, or School. Depending on which stat you want to increase, select the correct routine to ensure the correct stats are increasing.

If you’re interested to get one, I made an English translation guide for it too! It doesn’t cover every single Japanese text in the device (for e.g., the captions of each animation are not translated) but it’s good enough for you to be able to navigate around properly. The guide also includes a list of 50 questions and all possible personality outcomes. Download it here.

Enjoy!