A free demo for PC turn-based strategy title Humankind is now available.

What's more, the full game is on sale until 1st December across Steam, the Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store, with a 20 percent discount on both the standard and deluxe editions.

The demo allows players to experience 100 turns across three historical eras: Neolithic, Ancient, and Classical.

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Amplitude Studios' historical strategy game Humankind is getting in on the limited-time event action with a month-long celebration of Día de los Muertos, complete with related rewards.

As explained in Amplitude's announcement, events in Humankind - Día de los Muertos is hoped to be the first of "many" - will task players with completing various challenges across multiple chapters, with new chapters unlocking over the course of the event. Completing challenges will award players with unique customisation options, including symbols, frames, and avatars.

Humankind's Día de los Muertos event consists of two chapters, taking their cue from Mexico's Day of the Dead with challenges inspired by religion, celebration, and mesoamerican cultures.

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Amplitude's much-anticipated Humankind will launch into Xbox Game Pass on PC next week.

The 4X strategy game will finally roll out next Tuesday, 17th August, after several delays. It had originally been due in 2020.

All of that extra work appears to be paying off, though. We've played a fair bit of Humankind now, and Eurogamer's strategy buff Chris Tapsell reckons it has "that special something" in both its mechanics and ambition.

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Humankind, Amplitude's upcoming, history-spanning 4X game, gets a new closed beta soon, and it'll let you play through five of the game's six eras. There's also a snazzy new trailer to come with the announcement, which you can watch here:

Amplitude's done plenty of other betas like this in the past - which the studio refers to as OpenDevs - but this is the furthest into a game of Humankind you'll have been able to get, by some way.

You can play either 200 turns or up to the end of the Industrial Era, whichever comes first. Industrial era features include resources like coal and oil, railways, and artillery and air battles - we actually had a chance to explore some more of this ourselves during our latest preview but barely got halfway there, despite playing a good 10 to 15-odd hours, which should give you an idea of just how long you get with this beta.

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There's something kind of special about playing a new 4X game, especially a historical one. These games are about playing through history - all of history - which means that as much as they're about expanding, exploiting and the rest, they're really about discovery. This is the game: discovering your way through time, via The Wheel, or Irrigation, or Thermonuclear Weapons or whatever, until you reach the end of history and that game ends. And you do this over and over again, until you can fly your little towns through the neolithic age, a couple wars and a dalliance or two with Authoritarianism right the way to the future without really thinking about it.

The thinking about it, obviously, is the joy of any good 4X though, and that too is the special pleasure of a new one. I don't know the way from Masonry to Telecommunications anymore, I have to discover it - re-discover it, really. Like digging up an old Roman path.

Anyway, this is what I've been thinking about while playing Humankind for a lovely dozen or so hours, and for a time after it. Humankind is a game full of systems and empty space. The things to think about, deeply and lengthily, and the time to do the thinking. It's wonderfully moreish, and importantly now quite fully-formed. It's been roughly a year since I last previewed Humankind, and it's been delayed by a good year or so in that time too, but the game now feels close to the real thing.

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Amplitude, the developer currently beavering away on wonderful-looking historical strategy game Humankind for release later this year, is currently in the throes of its tenth anniversary celebrations, and it's made its three biggest games - Dungeon of the Endless, Endless Space 2, and Endless Legend - free to try this weekend on Steam as part of the revelry.

Each January, Amplitude gives itself a well-deserved birthday pat on the back under the guise of its Endless Day celebrations, but it's decided to retire that moniker for 2021, given Humankind's conspicuous lack of an 'Endless' in the title. Instead, this year marks the studio's inaugural Amplified event, which is set to conclude on Sunday, 24th January.

Perhaps the most immediately exciting news is the opportunity to play Amplitude's sci-fi strategy game Endless Space 2, fantasy 4X Endless Legend, and rogue-like tactical action affair Dungeon of the Endless - all enormously enjoyable games, by the way, if you haven't yet had the pleasure - at no cost on Steam for the duration of the event.

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Sega has announced a new April 2021 release window for Humankind, the Civilization-esque strategy in the works at Amplitude Studios.

Humankind was originally due this year but got pushed into 2021 back in June. It'll finally arrive some 10 months later - though there's no exact date as yet.

Sega would, however, like you to know you can pre-order Humankind now and receive a couple of extra cosmetics for doing so. Look for the Digital Deluxe Edition on Steam, Epic Games Store and even Stadia now, where it is 15 per cent off.

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Talking to Jean-Maxime Moris and Jeff Spock, Amplitude's executive producer and narrative director on Humankind, I can't help but feel a little bit guilty for immediately bringing up Civilization. There are more 4X games than Civ - and older ones at that - which means comparing every new 4X game to it can feel more than a little trite. But Sid Meier's influence is the one that lingers. It's also the closest, by far, to what Endless Space and Endless Legend developer Amplitude is aiming for with Humankind: a historical, diverse, and deeply optimistic game about the miraculous progress of the human race.

It's not perfect - certainly not yet, as the build I played was still waiting for a number of pretty crucial systems to be finalised, or even implemented at all - but what makes Humankind immediately stand out from its illustrious cousin is its approach to one of the genre's biggest frustrations. Humankind is trying to solve the problem of culture, that weird and conceptually squishy amalgamation which feels essential to any game about human history but has, so far, proved to be a bane of the Civilization series and others like it - and the team at Amplitude's Parisian studio might actually be onto something.

Amplitude's approach with Humankind is to make you choose a new culture for your civilization each time you progress into a new era. You don't choose a civilization at the start and play with them throughout, and instead all start from the same blank slate - with a customisable avatar representing you as a sort of detached 'leader' through the ages. The scenario I played lasted a couple of hours, up to a maximum of 60 turns or two eras, from more or less the very beginning of the game, which meant I was able to get a decent sense of how the culture-hopping worked out. The immediate thing you notice is how it maps much more sensibly to actual human history. Societies - speaking very generally here - tend to evolve according to the natural and social surroundings, so ones with fewer military rivals nearby and lots of lush, arable land might move more towards a peaceful, agricultural society, such as the Harappans (or Indus Valley Civilisation), which were based in what is now north-east Afghanistan, Pakistan, and north-western India in around 3300 - 1300 BCE.

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Humankind, Amplitude's Civilization-like 4X game, has been delayed to 2021 from its original 2020 billing, but you'll be able to play it much sooner thanks to its new "open dev" programme.

Coming this summer - no specific dates just yet - open dev sounds like a bit of a mix between a closed beta and early access. Amplitude's making three scenarios available, one at a time, which you can sign up to play for free and then give feedback on through some surveys afterwards.

The first scenario, about "discovery, small steps, growth" sees you take the reigns with a Babylonian civilisation in the early phases of the game, and equates to about 45 minutes of playtime. The second, "armies, battles, deployment, tactics" is split into four smaller parts, ranging from 15 to 30 minutes each, while the final one - "resist assault, worldwide" - sees you take on what looks like a kind of defensive test with an under-siege England.

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Amplitude Studios, the developer behind the likes of Endless Space and Endless Legend, has unveiled the first gameplay trailer for its upcoming historical strategy game Humankind.

Humankind, which builds its turn-based strategy around the classic 4X template, sees players attempting to guide their civilisation from the Neolithic era to the modern age, with over 60 different historical cultures - including the likes of the Ancient Egyptians, the Romans, the Khmers, and the Vikings - represented, all with unique abilities.

The twist, however, is that it's possible to combine cultures encountered during play in order to build your own unique civilisation as time ticks on. There are also real historical events to experience, scientific discoveries to make, and plenty of tactical skirmishes both on land and sea - with combat getting an airing in the new trailer below.

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