Hey everybody !


The time we have all been waiting for has finally arrived: the Humankind OpenDev period starts now!

If you've been selected to participate in the first scenario, you will soon receive a welcome email. Make sure to check our spam folder too! We all know how zealous those filters can be. Check back tomorrow as well, as the emails may take up to 24h to arrive. Once you know you've been selected, go to your Games2Gether Profile page and look for the OpenDev Reward at the top of the page. Redeem this reward to add Humankind OpenDev to your Steam library and be among the first people to play Humankind!

If you haven't been selected yet, don't give up hope! We will ad more players over the course of OpenDev, so you may still get to participate with the second or third scenario, and you can even still sign up! In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for a lot of fresh Humankind content, as OpenDev participants are free to share their experiences or livestream. You can also join us for streams every week, starting today at 6PM CEST.





A few key points to remember:

• 
  Share your experience! - The contents of OpenDev are not under NDA, so feel free to stream or make videos! (Please do mention that this is an early version of the game, though.)
• 
  OpenDev Access needs to be redeemed through Games2Gether - Access to OpenDev is distributed through our Games2Gether Reward system, so double-check that your Steam account is linked.
• 
  Check the OpenDev subforum - There is a forum for OpenDev participants to discuss their experience and post feedback. If you cannot see the forum, please log out and back in again.
• 
  Scenarios are time limited – Each will be available from Thursday at 15:00 BST / 16:00 CEST / 07:00 PDT through Monday at the same time
• 
  The scenarios end with a survey - We know surveys can be boring, but please take your time to fill out the survey after you finish a scenario. The survey is vital for the feedback gathering of OpenDev.
• 
  We will grant access to additional applicants with each new scenario – Keep checking their email in the coming weeks!
• 
  Getting access later grants access to all previous scenarios  – In fact, we would prefer that even if you join later you play the scenarios in order as they have a bit of an tutorial progression to them
• 
  Applications will remain open during the entire process – Even if you weren’t selected for this first round, you can apply now for a chance to be included in the 2nd or 3rd wave of players

We're thrilled by the interest you have all shown in OpenDev and are looking forward to your feedback. Let's make Humankind a great 4X game together!


We hope you'll have fun with this first taste of what the game has to offer,

-- The Amplitude Team

Hey everybody,



We have already talked about how you can shape your civilization by picking different cultures before, so today we want to tell you about another way you shape your civilization and their history in Humankind: Civics and Ideologies! Check out the video below or read the blog for more information.




Civics represent many different aspects of your civilization. They are a legal and structural reflection of the moral choices, values, and beliefs of your society. How is your government structured? Who owns the land? What are the religious rites of your society like?



These Civics are unlocked by specific gameplay situations, so that the choices you can take always relate to the achievements and experience of your people in some way. However, to enact any Civics, you will also need Civics Points, which are gained slowly over time if your empire is stable. For each Civic, you can enact one of two options that provide immediate gameplay benefits, but also shift your ideologies. Once enacted, Civics are difficult to change except in specific circumstances or events. For example, if the culture of your neighbors influences your people, they may ask you to adopt change your Civics to more closely match your neighbors.



Ideologies represent the values and shape of your civilization in a different way, a result of many individual decisions taken over the course of the game.
Each time you select a Civics option or make a decision on a narrative event, you move your society along one of the four ideological axes. These axes are Economy, Geopolitics, Government, and Society. Each axis is divided into five different steps that provide different gameplay bonuses, with a balanced bonus at the center and more specialist bonuses at the extremes of the axes. In addition to these bonuses, Ideologies will affect diplomacy, and how easy or difficult it is for you to wage a protracted war against a neighbor. It is harder to keep your people motivated to fight a neighbor they share values with.

In addition to Civics, your Ideologies are influenced by Narrative Events.
These events are inspired by historical events, and are triggered by specific gameplay situations. Thanks to these specific conditions, you may discover new events even after playing many games of Humankind, and experience new combinations of events each game. On top of their immediate gameplay benefits, costs, or consequences, many of these events can lead to further events later in the game. Furthermore, you will always have to weigh the immediate results against the long-term shift of the Ideologies of your civilization.



Since Ideologies are shaped by your Civics and choices during events, they will dynamically shift over time. This system allows you to shape your civilization, and experience the history and journey of your people.


Hope you enjoyed this brief look at the Civics and Ideologies systems in Humankind!

Let us know what you think below.

Hello everybody,



it’s been a while since we could last share a Feature Focus with all of you, so instead of dwelling on how the change to Work From Home has affected how we create these videos, let’s just dive right in:


The sound is as important to immersing yourself in a video game as the visuals are. Little pulls you out of an experience as quickly as what you hear not matching what you see. So we wanted to make sure that what you hear in Humankind always reflects the environment you see.

We have recorded many hours of sounds for this, and have combined them to create appropriate soundscapes for the different landscapes you can find in the eleven biomes in Humankind. The sound system is also dynamic and adjust to what you are looking at and how far away it is, so for example as you pan around the map and move closer to the ocean, you will hear the crashing of waves, as you zoom in on a jungle, the sounds of animals will fade in.

However, all of this is best experienced by checking out the two videos below with more details and examples!







We hope you enjoyed this little look at the sounds of Humankind!

What would the internet be without memes? Probably a much less interesting and funny place.

Sometimes we use them to say something in just one image.

Sometimes we use them just for fun.

This time, you can use them to win.


Today, we are launching the official Humankind What If website and associated contest. For the next few weeks, we want you to share your memes about alternate history as we ask you: What if? What if?

What if the Khmer fought at the Battle of Hastings? What if the Roman empire had never fallen? What if you were able to reshape the course of history?




You may not be able to do that in game yet, but you can do so through memes. For 10 weeks, we will announce a new theme every week (Language for the first week) and ask you to share your memes for that theme to win prizes like game keys, or the chance to play Humankind before release as part of OpenDev. Then, our weekly winners will face off in the community voting challenge for a chance at the grand prize: The entire Sega catalog of PC games on Steam!

You can find all the details of the contest as well as a meme generator over on the official What If website.

And don’t forget, you can still sign up for OpenDev for a chance to participate even if you don’t fancy joining the contest!


We’re excited to see what you will come up with every week!



Have fun
- The Amplitude Team

Hello everyone,


Over the past few weeks, many of you have been asking how the current health situation has affected the Amplitude team and the development of Humankind. Let me begin by saying that we take the well-being of our team quite seriously and that everybody at Amplitude is doing mostly fine. We made an early decision to transition into a working-from-home environment, and with the help of SEGA, we were able to accelerate this process efficiently, and the development of the game has been progressing steadily since.
However, the different work environment has certainly had an impact on our workflows, sometimes in unexpected ways. After much deliberation about this new reality of ours, we have decided that in order to deliver the game of our dreams, to move the release of Humankind to 2021.


We have also received many questions if Humankind will go through an Early Access period like we have done in the past with our other games, and the answer is that we will try something different with Humankind, something new and exciting that we call OpenDev!
Community involvement has always been a cornerstone of how we make games, but we feel we can do something more impactful with the development of Humankind than what a classic Early Access period can provide, and with OpenDev you will get to play three different scenarios and a more streamlined way to provide your feedback. You can find all the details about this in the dedicated OpenDev blog.


With Humankind taking off at full speed, we have noticed that many of you wonder what this means for Endless Space 2. Well, we have not forgotten you! — We are working together with Clumsy Dwarves (formerly from NGD studios) to deliver a series of patches for Endless Space 2, which are aiming to address a number of problems reported by many of you in the community.
The first of these patches will release this month, and it will fix some of the most critical and commonly reported bugs! More patches will follow in the coming months, so stay tuned for more information about those. We want you to be able to enjoy Endless Space 2 for a long time, so these patches are made with love as well as code.


- SpaceTroll

Hello everybody,


In our previous Feature Focus videos we talked about our vision for Humankind and some of the game’s core systems. This week we will turn our attention to another aspect that will help players immerse themselves in the game: The Soundtrack.

Check out the videos below, or read the summary in the blog.




We think many of our long-time fans will be happy to hear that the soundtrack for Humankind has been arranged by Arnaud Roy, who previously created the Endless soundtracks under the name of FlyByNo.

Arnaud is quite excited to work on Humankind, because it truly constitutes an epic challenge to create music for 60 different cultures from different historical eras. To cover the breadth of cultures and to tackle this daunting project, he worked with ten different solo musicians, each one being an expert in different styles of traditional music as well as instruments.

The cultures represented in the game were divided into several cultural groups, and roughly 8 hours of music pieces were recorded for these groups in total, all based on either traditional compositions, or improvisations by the musicians themselves. To give a few examples, you will hear Mesoamerican flutes, the guzheng (also known as the Chinese zither), the oud, a baroque string trio, and a replica of an ancient Greek cithara (played by Arnaud himself) when listening to the music of Humankind.

In addition to the traditional pieces, Arnaud arranged about 90 minutes of orchestral music. This music attempts to evoke nature and a sense of exploration through its musical direction, for example the prominent use of wind instruments. These orchestral pieces also feature performances by the traditional instruments used for the different culture groups, as well as choirs, which have almost become a signature of Arnaud’s work for Amplitude. The lyrics for these choirs are drawn from classical literature in Latin and Greek this time, for example Ovid and Sophocles.


We hope you enjoyed learning a little more about the soundtrack for Humankind, and invite you to check out the main theme:

Hello everybody,



Since we announced Humankind, we have seen a lot of questions and speculation on two core systems of the game: Fame and Cultures. It’s finally time for us to dive deeper into how you will leave your mark on history and shape the legacy of your civilization, so check out the video and blogpost below:





Humankind is all about your journey through history, not its conclusion, and this is reflected in the games unified victory condition known as Fame. Every discovery you make, every wonder you built, and many other great deeds will grant you Fame, tracking the mark your civilization left on history. With all your achievements taken into account, Humankind offers you many paths to a single goal: To shape a legacy that lasts through the ages! After all, we remember great builders and great conquerors alike.

This also gives you a lot of flexibility to adapt your strategy to your environment and changing circumstances as the game advances. You can shift from being a civilization focused on science and trade to defending against an aggressor with both contributing equally to your Fame. As all of your great achievements add to your Fame regardless of Era, your journey through history is as important as the goal you eventually reach.


Discovering a Natural Wonder will grant you Fame.


While many great discoveries and projects contribute to your Fame, the main source of Fame are the Era Stars.

In each era, you can earn Era Stars in seven categories related to your economic development, military, and expansion. You may earn up to three stars in each category by reaching increasingly difficult goals scaling with how well you were doing in that category in previous eras. Once you have earned 7 Era Stars, you are ready to transition to a different Culture or transcend with your current Culture. You do not have to make this decision immediately, but as any Culture can be present only once in game, delaying for too long may limit your choices.



Are you a builder... or a conqueror?


We want each Culture to feel appropriate to their era, to maintain immersion and a sense of authenticity, which is why when you enter a new Era, you are given a choice of ten Cultures that were prominent during this period of history.

We worked closely with historians to ensure that we present a proper picture of these cultures, both in their overall presentation and in the details. While this is perhaps most visible in the artwork and the 3D models used in game, we also want the unique character of each culture to be reflected in gameplay, so each Culture is defined in gameplay by four features:



A design draft of a screen showing your civilization.


A Gameplay Orientation, like Agrarian, Aesthete, or Militarist, giving you access to a powerful ability related to this Orientation, as well as increased Fame gains for the related Era Star.
An Emblematic Quarter, which offers unique bonuses or effects that will remain active in the cities that built them as the game advances through the Eras.
An Emblematic Unit with a unique ability that sets them apart from their common counterpart and expands your options in tactical combat.
A Legacy Trait granting a unique bonus that you will keep throughout the rest of the game, allowing you to combine up to six different Legacy Traits by the end of the game.






Of course, we do not want to force you to abandon a Culture you are particularly enjoying, so you also have the option to transcend with your current culture. This means forgoing a new Legacy Trait, Emblematic Quarter, and Emblematic Unit, in exchange for gaining additional Fame for the rest of the game.



Questions? Comments? Let us know below!

We hope you enjoyed this closer look at Fame and Cultures in Humankind!

Hello everybody,



We had hinted before how we had itereted on the concept of regions and city development with Humankind, and it's finally time for us to dive into the details of Claiming Territory: Territories, Cities and Outposts, (Emblematic) Quarters, and even Wonders!

Check out the video and blog below for a closer look!






In our previous game, Endless Legend, we introduced the idea of pre-existing regions on the map. Players could claim these regions by founding a city, and expand their city within the region’s borders. We received great feedback on this, so for Humankind we decided to iterate on this idea and make regions more dynamic.


To do this, we introduced a new type of ownership. On the one hand we have cities that you can grow and develop, on the other hand we have Outposts. These outposts can be founded by any of your armies in neutral territory, and mark your claim on that territory. However, they are fragile and easily destroyed, so you will need to defend them with your armies.




These outposts can be developed into cities by investing in them, or they can be absorbed by an existing city, merging their territory into a larger region in which to exploit resources and expand your city.




We also wanted the cities to expand across the map in a way that makes sense for the terrain around them. As a city’s population grows, you will be able to construct additional Quarters to expand the area of your city. These Quarters will exploit the resources on the tiles around them, so you will naturally want to expand your cities in ways that make sense to exploit the resources of your region efficiently. This “organic” growth of your city will lead each of your cities to have a unique shape, a sense of place.




We also wanted to reflect the history of the city and the player’s civilization in the city, so we decided that certain Quarters would maintain their appearance even as players change their culture. Both city centers and Emblematic Quarters will retain their central structures even as the architecture of the other quarters around them changes. This way, you will be able to tell just from looking at a city which cultures influenced its development.




Finally, if your civilization is artistically inclined, you may be able to lay claim to a Wonder. However, these wonders are monumental projects, so you may require the contributions of more than one of your cities to build them!




We hope you enoyed this closer look at regions and cities in Humankind!

We know you’re all eager for more information about Humankind, so we got another video for you this week: Reimagining Terrain!

To a historical strategy game like Humankind, terrain is an important game pillar that helps to immerse the player in the experience. From elevation to natural wonders, the terrain in Humankind is designed to improve this immersion while offering strategic challenges and opportunities.

Find out more in the video below:




We want you to be able to be fully immersed in this world. We want to push you to explore every valley, mountain range, or coastline. We want you to be able to find the perfect spot for your glorious city, your own little piece of paradise.

In order to do that we tried to create a rich and colorful, but also believable world, and we paid special attention to how all the elements blend into one another.



Elevation is a key aspect of terrain in Humankind. We want our players to develop a strong sense of the shape of the world, with flatlands, hilly areas, and mountain ranges feeling clearly distinct. The terrain in Humankind is fully three-dimensional, so each tile has an elevation, and depending on the surrounding tiles, you will find gentle slopes you can climb, or impassable cliffs that create challenges or opportunities for your exploration or battles.

For example, moving through forests or valleys will restrict your line of sight, so exploring from the high ground is a better option. Mountains and cliffs may get in the way of your explorers, but they can also serve as useful barriers in combat. Even if you cannot find any cliffs to control the shape of the battlefield, forests, rivers, and the high ground will have an impact on your battles.




Elevation by itself is not enough to create a sense of place and a believable world, however, as the world would be rather barren without appropriate vegetation. Each territory on the map has a temperature and humidity based on its location and height, and these are used to determine its biome. Territories near the equator may be tropical or deserts, those near the poles or high up in the mountains may be tundra or taiga, or a number of other biomes.




These biomes allow us to control the spread of features like rocky terrain, forests, or fertile grassland to create a plausible landscape for each biome, be that a sandy desert, a boreal forest, or an expansive savannah. Furthermore, the biomes allow us to create believable visuals while keeping the gameplay effects of terrain persistent and readable: For example, forests may look different in tropical territories than in the temperate or subpolar climes, but it will always be a boon to your industry, while open grassland will allow you to feed your people.




Since we want the terrain to inform the player’s decisions, the different types of terrain offer different yields like Food or Industry, which will influence the growth of your cities.

To create areas of strategic interest and enhance the visual appeal of the map, we have also introduced various terrain features. Some of these will affect the basic resource yields of a tile, like an oasis in the desert or a geyser, while others will offer you access to strategic and luxury resources that are crucial to fueling your economy and military and at the same time create visual landmarks that help create a world as rich as possible.




Some terrain features like deep forests, long rivers, or large deserts will be notable landmarks, and if you are the first to discover them, you will get to name them. If you are really lucky, you may even discover one of the unique natural wonders, which will bring you Fame.




We hope you enjoyed this closer look at terrain in Humankind!

Hello everybody!

Judging by the burning questions and wild speculation we've seen on the forum, many of you have been eager to learn more about Humankind. How does combat work? Is there religion? How do you build your cities? What about diplomacy? You clearly want to know everything there is to know about our next game.

Unfortunately for you, we have not been ready to talk about all these subject yet.

Today, we are starting a new series of Dev Diaries on our Youtube channel that will answer many of your questions in time.





This first Dev Diary talks about our vision for Humankind, its themes, and what this game means to us.

In future diaries, we will take a closer look at different aspects and features of the game.


So stay tuned for more!