Human Resource Machine
Give it 4 hours
What the data shows
- In the first 2 hours 1 in 7 reviews are negative (15%); after 7h it's 1 in 35 (3%).
- Fully opens up by hour 7.
- The opening is criticised less than in 83% of games we track.
- 15% of players who start reach the ending.
- The biggest drop-off is between “Career Milestone 3” (sabbatical beach) and “Career Milestone 4” (midnight petroleum): from 66% to 32% of starters.
- 89% of owners got the first achievement.
When it gets good
Share of positive reviews by how many hours the reviewer had played when writing the review.
before it gets good opening up fully opened up
Based on all 4,760 Steam reviews in every language. Median playtime in a sample of 300 reviews: 8.3h for positive, 3.1h for negative. Almost every game is rated lower in the first 2–3 hours: that window includes refunds and quick first impressions. What matters is how deep the dip is and how fast the game recovers.
Where players quit
Share of players who started the game and reached each story milestone. 100% is the most common achievement (89% of owners), so people who bought the game and never launched it don't count.
- Started playing 100%
- Career Milestone 1 coffee time 100%
- Career Milestone 2 employee morale insertion 75% −25
- Career Milestone 3 sabbatical beach 66% −9
- Career Milestone 4 midnight petroleum Most players quit here 32% −34
- Career Milestone 5 where's carol? 28% −4
- Career Milestone 6 end program 15% −13
story milestone ending biggest drop-off
Story milestones were labeled by AI from achievement names and descriptions; mistakes are possible.
All achievements (16)
story milestone ending side
- Career Milestone 1 coffee time 100%
- Career Milestone 2 employee morale insertion 75%
- Career Milestone 3 sabbatical beach 66%
- Glorious Failure: Solution Not Robust solve a puzzle for a specific set of inputs, while still failing with other possible inputs 61%
- Orange Optimization Award orange path fully optimized 40%
- King of Verbosity solve any puzzle with at least 4x the number of commands required by the size challenge 32%
- Career Milestone 4 midnight petroleum 32%
- Career Milestone 5 where's carol? 28%
- Glorious Failure: Overflow attempt to generate a number that is too big to store in green boxes 24%
- Glorious Failure: Out of Bounds attempt to read or write with a tile on the floor that does not exist 23%
- Career Milestone 6 end program 15%
- Excellent Instruction Follower all levels complete. congratulations. 9.1%
- Queen of Inefficiency solve any puzzle with at least 4x the number of steps required by the speed challenge 9.0%
- Blue Optimization Award blue path fully optimized 6.7%
- Social Engineer ask all bosses to tell you more 6.3%
- Green Optimization Award green path fully optimized 5.2%