Humankind

What the game is

Humankind is a turn-based history strategy game by Amplitude Studios, out since 2021 on Windows and macOS. It covers the same span as most games of its kind, from a few people in the Neolithic to a modern state, but it does one thing differently, and the whole game is built around it: you do not pick a civilization at the start and keep it. At each of six eras you choose a new culture from the period, and the ones you left behind stay with you as accumulated traits.

So a run might open as the Babylonians, become the Maya in the Classical era, the Umayyads in the Medieval, the British in the Early Modern. Each culture brings one economic leaning, one unique district and one unique unit, and each one stacks a permanent bonus on top of everything you already were. The result on screen is a hex map of cities that were founded by one people and finished by another.

Victory is not a single condition but Fame, a running score for notable achievements, so a long careful game and a short brutal one can both win. Steam reviews sit at Mixed, unusually low for a game in this catalog, largely over balance and the late eras. Culture packs and one expansion are sold separately.

What you actually do

A turn is city placement, district building, research and diplomacy, with battles fought on the map in a small tactical layer rather than resolved by a die roll. The interesting decision arrives at each era change: you look at what the next era offers, at what your cities already are, and at which culture your rivals will take if you do not. Committing to a military culture because it suits this war means carrying that bonus for the next three eras. Getting better means reading your own accumulated shape and choosing the culture that compounds it, instead of chasing whatever is strongest in isolation.

What it exercises

• Chooses between options by what compounds with past choices, not present strength
• Places settlements by reading terrain, resources and distance together
• Plans several eras ahead while the board keeps changing
• Recognizes many named historical cultures and roughly when they existed
• Weighs a short-term war against a long-term score

Why we rate it Low Worksheet score 52 / 100

1. FitHow much real knowledge or skill does the play itself make you use?45weight 45%

   Fit lands at 45. The argument that societies borrow from each other and change identity over time is not narrated anywhere; it is enforced by the rule that you must change culture at every era, so a player absorbs it by playing rather than by reading it. What holds the number down is that each culture is finally just a bonus and a unit, so the idea is structural rather than substantive.

2. TransferWill what you practise here work outside the game?38weight 30%

   Transfer sits at 38. Players leave with a rough timeline and a stock of culture names, Nubians, Mycenaeans, Aksumites, Khmer, that most school curricula never mention, along with a working sense that history is continuous rather than a set of separate nations. The number stays low because the game's account of each culture is genuinely thin, so what travels is an impression rather than real content.

3. PracticeDoes the game make you use that skill again and again, as it gets harder?80weight 25%

   Practice is the strongest dimension by far, at 80. A campaign runs a few hundred turns with six era decisions apiece, and the culture-combination system is built to be replayed differently each time. It falls short of the very top because the late eras are widely considered weaker, and many players stop before reaching the modern age at all.

What the evidence says

Editorial onlyNobody outside our desk has checked this. It is our reading of how the game plays.

The evidence level is Editorial only. What is confirmed comes from the Steam listing: the Amplitude authorship, the 2021 release, the price, the platforms, the six-era structure, the sixty combinable cultures, the Fame victory condition and the separately sold packs. No study of Humankind was found and none is claimed. The meaningfulness case rests on one structural decision, forcing a culture change at every era, and on an editorial reading of what that repeatedly makes a player notice. It is not a measured effect on historical understanding, and the game's own account of each culture is thin.

• Steam store page ↗ · Valve