By and large, mankind has had a troubled history. We tend to run headlong into catastrophe, occasionally only surviving by the skin of our teeth. Correcting such flaws is an inherent fantasy of Humankind, a 4X RTS all about guiding people through several eras of evolution. It's an underrated project that went a bit under the radar for many, but now it's free for a limited time if you'd like to try.
strategy game differs from similar releases such as the Civilization series, is that you can change cultures after each era, giving you more variety and scope than is typical.
All sorts of aspects can become intermingled, from architecture to military, letting you shape the world in a truly distinctive fashion that almost brings to mind the god sim Black and White. There's a certain granularity, especially in the post-launch updates from developer Amplitude Studios, that makes Humankind stand out.
This is particular evident in the combat. The options available made it a stronger war game than Civilization anyway, but later additions let you play particularly aggressively. You can now declare war on whomever you want without any prior warning – they needed to be a certain level of threat previosly. Beyond that, you don't need to accept any surrenders either.
That's not necessarily the most rewarding way to go about things, but it's nice to have the option if you want to just blast through a particular era or playthrough. This is the most grounded of Amplitude's releases, since the other releases are the Endless Space and Endless Legend series, fantasy games, respectively. Humankind shows another side to the team, and it's a very welcome one that demonstrates Amplitude's capabilities away from pulp genre tropes and such.
Humankind is free on the Epic Game Store from now until February 13, 2025. Not only that, but oceanic relaxing game that mostly entails swimming with whales.
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