If you're tempted by Civilization: Beyond Earth, but not enough to stump up the wonga without knowing if and how well it will run on your PC, I have some good news: demos are a thing. Admittedly, not a thing that exists much anymore, but Firaxis have always been very good at offering up a generous amount of their games for no money. Beyond Earth is no exception, and if you navigate your way to the game's Steam page you'll find that there's now a big 'Download Demo' box on the right.

It's 5GB in size, and Reddit users are stating that it gives you 100 turns to play around with, as per usual for Firaxis' Civ demos. That's a good amount of time to get a feel for the game—although for a fuller overview and appraisal of Beyond Earth, you could always check out our review.

Beyond Earth begins with the very sci-fi premise of What if? What if you took Civilization, the classic turn-based grand strategy game, and made one of its signature endings the beginning of a whole new game?

In Civilization, you can win the game by building a spaceship to launch your civilization into space, in search of a new world. Beyond Earth takes that ending and makes it a beginning. You are now on that new world: Go.

The result is a game that succeeds in almost exactly the same way as it fails; a major case of cognitive dissonance. Beyond Earth, while bearing many attributes of a brand new game, is based in Civilization 5 s engine and mechanics. It is in many ways exactly the same game as Civ 5, just spacier.

Is that a problem? That depends on how much you like Civ 5, and how willing you are to take the ride and give Beyond Earth s new space look a shot.

For me it was a problem all through my first game. I played as the Brazilian civ, with its bonus to melee combat. Being a Civ veteran, I, without even realizing it, ported over my go-to Civ strategy of focusing on strength in the early age to build the foundation of a strong late-game civilization. And then, turn-by-turn, I played the game almost on auto-pilot.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn t enjoy the experience. And it took me losing that game and having to step away and reassess how I was approaching it in order to learn how to love it.

New world

Beyond Earth has a lot of new looks: new units, new victories, a completely new tech tree (actually, it s a web), new leaders, new civilizations and a handful of things under the hood that are also completely new. But the experience of cracking it open, watching my colony ship settle onto a completely dark map and then setting foot onto this alien world felt just like playing Civ 5—at first.

On the one hand, there are many worse 4X strategy games to emulate than Civ 5, and as that game s expansions have proved, while it redesigned much of the original Civ formula, it left a lot of room on the table for reinventing itself. Beyond Earth brings some of the better reinventions along with it. Trade routes feature prominently in Beyond Earth, for one thing, as does a new strategic component much like Gods & Kings s religions, called Affinities.

Affinities allow you to evolve your Beyond Earth civ beyond its human origins, focusing research on technologies that will play to how you want to interface with your new world and its inhabitants.

The Harmony affinity is what it sounds like, allowing you to meld with the new planet s lifeforms and create new alien units. Purity focuses on genetic manipulation of the human genome to build better versions of your civ. Finally, Supremacy lets you make your civ s humans into cyborgs with giant robot friends.

Each affinity allows for slightly different victories and affinity-only units, and can have a dramatic effect on your overall game. Specializing in Supremacy will unlock robot soldiers, for example. Whereas the Harmony affinity will grant you access to alien-based units and the ability to tolerate the new world s harsh alien environment. Other civs will respond to you (or not) based on your affinity, and actions you take in the world can impact your affinity score.

This is most noticeable when dealing with the planet s indigenous creatures. Instead of Civilization s barbarians, Beyond Earth has a variety of alien lifeforms, some more aggressive than others. On the surface, these seem to be more bug-like versions of the barbarians, but they play and react quite differently from their hairier, Earth-bound cousins. Whereas barbarians will more or less attack whatever is in range at random, the aliens will frequently not attack unless provoked. I was able to send Explorer units carefully into heavily alien-infested territories without earning so much as a scratch. Still, other times, aliens would attack me at random, either provoked by the presence of one of my military units or by the aggressive actions of my civ neighbors. Over-aggressively terraform your new world and your Harmony attributes will be for naught, as aggro aliens force you into conflict. Whereas attempting to clear out the new world s alien lifeforms (instead of attempting to harmonize with them), can lead to them becoming even more aggressive, eventually luring more powerful aliens toward your cities.

The other big newness is the orbital layer. You can build and launch satellites in Beyond Earth, and these will impart benefits to specific tiles. Some are quest- and victory-based, and others are magnificent weapons. The Planet Carver, for example, shoots a massive beam of weaponized energy from space and it is glorious. You can toggle between the planetary and orbital layer with a button, and you can knock enemy satellites out of orbit with certain ranged units.

The Orbital Layer adds a fun, new twist and an engaging tactical element to Civ 5 s already finely tuned tactical game. I found myself chuckling at the misfortune of civs that crossed my path when I had Planet Carvers at my disposal. And deploying Solar Collectors and Miasma Repulsers (to clear away the alien planet s harmful, natural vapors) made me feel like I now had a new, more direct tool for improving my cities.

Besides, who doesn t like launching stuff into space?

Old struggles

Now for the bad news: It s easy to feel like Beyond Earth is just an expansion to Civ 5, albeit spacier than those that came before. For Civ 5 fans like myself, this is a loaded proposition.

If you like Civ 5, then more Civ 5 equals more Civ 5, which is great! But there s no denying that even as much as I love Civ 5 (and I do love it, quite a lot), I was expecting something more from Beyond Earth than Civ 5 with a sci-fi skin. And in spite of the dramatic opening cinematic, the rocketing descent of my landing craft and the stirring opening text about how my civilization had traveled the stars to start anew and blah, blah… as soon as that first turn started and my explorer unit stared across the landscape dotted with hex grids and covered with the fog of war, I felt a rush of disappointment.

My newly founded city needed to produce things, and although those things bore new names, they seemed to me the same, old buildings in all but name alone. And although the alien landscape was littered with seemingly-unusual resources, the deadly miasma and resource pods containing goodies for home, all that, too, felt same old, at first blush.

So I set about methodically slogging through the familiar in search of the new, and without my even realizing it, I found it.

Starting over

Beyond Earth s many similarities to Civ 5 mask, to its detriment, a game that is remarkably new and different, and once I was able to see past those similarities, the newness and wonder of playing in a future Civ sandbox washed over me like a slow boiling pot of water. I was engrossed before I realized it.

As the Brazilians, I was aiming for a Purity affinity, but fumbled my way through the research web willy-nilly and eventually lost the game without ever realizing one of my enemies had been close to victory. Not great, but that s when it finally dawned on me that Beyond Earth, in spite of its heavy foundation in Civ 5 s mechanics and rules, is actually a completely different game.

So I started again, this time as the Slavic Federation. I would specialize in Supremacy and after a bit of research on what the new victories actually were (pro tip: read the f-ing manual), I decided to shoot for the Contact victory, but build a strong enough civ that, should all else fail, I could at least take over the world.

Beyond Earth offers five victory conditions, although two are similar, differing only in which affinity will unlock it.

Contact involves discovering an alien signal and unlocking the secret of your new planet s Progenitor species, an ancient alien race that left mysterious ruins behind. It is by far the most narrative of the victories, although its attempts at narrative don t always mesh well with Civ s UI.

One specific portion of the road to the Contact victory, for example, called for sending a military unit to a recently discovered alien ruin. I located the ruin and dispatched a rover… and waited. And waited. And waited. The instruction dialogue said the ruin itself had summoned a civilian from one of my cities, then asked me to send a military unit, presumably to escort that civilian. Which I had done, but I wasn t sure if I had skipped a step. After several turns I finally noticed a new button had appeared in the rover s action panel. I pressed the button and the quest concluded anti-climactically, with a text box and a ding. Wheres Firaxis s other sci-fi game, XCOM, uses cinematics to impart such momentous advancements, the Beyond Earth solution felt more than a little hollow and frustrating.

Domination is what it sounds like, giving you the win if you capture all of the opposing civ s capitals. This is the most Civ-like of the victories, although it does require some mastery of Beyond Earth s new technologies and units.

Emancipation and Promised Land are two sides of the same coin. You must research the technology to eventually open either an Emancipation or Exodus gate back to Earth, bringing those left behind either salvation or dominance. If you are Purity or Supremacy, this is your Affinity-scientific end game.

Transcendence is the Harmony victory. It involves researching alien technologies to create a mind flower that will unite your consciousness with that of the alien planet. City buildings can aid in this victory, shortening the amount of time it takes for the mind flower to bloom.

In addition to the end game victory, Beyond Earth also brings along smaller quests. Occasionally new technologies or improvements will offer a choice for how they are used, adding additional money or food, for example, or presenting a moral or philosophical choice. Eradicate aliens or domesticate them, for example. It s a nice new twist and they gave me a stronger connection to the decisions I was making, and gave an aspect of the game that has typically been ho-hum, more drama.

Quests will occasionally also be simply fun things to experience. There is a massive 'siege worm' in Beyond Earth, for example. A late-game Harmony technology will eventually allow you to control these worms, like Paul Atreides in Dune, but an early-game quest with no affinity restriction tasks you with killing one. If you can pull it off, it s a hoot.

Playing as the Purity Brazilians, I eventually corralled a siege worm and with the help of one air unit, three ranged units, a melee soldier and a satellite buff, I took it. It had already destroyed two settlers, half a dozen military units, countless trade convoys and an entire outpost. The quest reward didn t nearly repay what I had lost, but it was a glorious struggle.

Ascension

As the Supremacy Slavs, I slaughtered alien lifeforms with abandon, reaping monetary and technological rewards and tried to focus my research on Supremacy techs to grow my military force. When the ARC civilization landed on a plain I had planned to colonize myself, I decided to go full tactical and take them out.

What followed was an, at times, tedious, but overall successful campaign to take over the ARC land and, in the process, clear an alien infestation from a mountainous jungle that would eventually form the production center of my empire. Using Brawlers, Rovers, and Gunners, I first attacked ARC s capitol and was repulsed, and then withdrew into the jungle to wage war on the aliens while earning upgrades and improving my equipment with scientific research. Dozens of turns later, I emerged from the jungle with a seasoned army and conquered the ARC one city at a time. They were but the first.

As my neighbors inched toward various victories, I invaded their lands to secure my dominance, building a robot empire on the bones of their fallen civilizations.

For my third playthrough, I wanted to win without firing shot. I almost succeeded.

I picked the Franco-Iberian civ and focused on the Harmony affinity. Instead of clearing the alien miasma, I left it alone and eventually developed immunity to its effects through technology.

Focusing on trade and science, I built a civ on an archipelago-like planet that spanned two large islands. I traded with every other civ, giving both them and me a boost to income and science. I made deals for resources I had in abundance. I made friends. Meanwhile I used my trade vessels to boost my own productivity and growth, and built city and tile improvements that gave me a scientific edge.

When war broke out between the Polystralians and the PAC, I took no sides. When the Brazilians edged closer to their own Transcendence victory, I made trade routes to beef up my science output and closed the gap.

Above: Gameplay footage we captured from an earlier preview build.

When I pulled ahead, and Brasilia began massing troops near my border, I formed alliances elsewhere and quietly poured money at my military and defenses.

Ultimately, war never came. Although I was forced to kill a handful of arbitrarily aggressive aliens, I dominated my fellow civs with science and trade, with my guns silent. And when my mind flower bloomed, I felt like I finally understood everything Beyond Earth had to offer. And, just like for my Harmony civ, with understanding came a deep appreciation for my new world/game s many complexities.

This is how Beyond Earth succeeds in spite of its similarities to Civ 5. It offers a game steeped in the traditions and mechanics of Civilization, that s nevertheless surprising and new in often unexpected ways. I ve conquered countless civilizations on the planet Earths of each various Civilization game, and each time it s felt like reinventing a fantasy version of the past. In Beyond Earth, victory feels like living in—and forging—humanity s future, and I can honestly say I ve never had more fun building a civ to stand the test of time.

Science has a lot of running to do to catch up with the aspirational extremes of science fiction, but many of the concepts and technologies that you use to mould your futuristic society in Civilization: Beyond Earth are based on real world ideas and technology. Beyond Earth's sprawling technology web encompasses futuristic interpretations of biology, bionics and military science, so let's take a look at some of the real science behind those spectacular inventions.

Space lasers

Orbital units in Civilization: Beyond Earth have many uses, both helpful and destructive. By positioning a satellite in the orbital view you can buff cities and tiles positioned beneath it, or use an orbital weapon to devastate an enemy. The orbital weapons platform has long had a place in science fiction, whether you're reading Akira or watching James Bond try to shut down the Goldeneye platform. The reality of weaponised orbital units thankfully doesn't reflect the fiction.

This is thanks in part to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which forbade nations from sending nuclear warheads into space. The treaty was necessary at the height of the Cold War, when the militarisation of space began in earnest. The secret Soviet space station, Almaz 2, was equipped with a gun on-board to fend off potential boarding actions from US forces, though the whole space station would have to be rotated to aim the weapon, and there were fears that the kinetic force of firing the gun could destabilise the station's orbit.

But what about space-to-Earth orbital attack craft? These largely exist in theoretical forms. The Nazi regime designed heliobeam—a huge space mirror that would concentrate sunlight on a point on Earth's surface. The Soviet Fractional Orbit Bombardment system orbited Earth for 15 years during the Cold War, and was capable of guiding nuclear missiles in low orbit. That was decommissioned in the early '80s in accordance with space demilitarisation agreements.

Space-capable nations have been launching classified missions for decades, so it's impossible to say for sure that more elaborate space weapons aren't orbiting right now. On a new planet with no international treaties, like the ones envisioned by Civilization: Beyond Earth, there's every chance humanity could develop very effective orbital weapons platforms.

Bionic augmentation

In Civilization: Beyond Earth, you can choose to align your civ with one of three affinities. Each reflects a different philosophical approach to humanity's future. The technology of each faction is hugely important to their identity. The Supremacy affinity, for example, is all about using technology to help humanity advance its current form. They want to improve our human characteristics through advanced computing and superior bionic components.

Most of these ideas are far from feasible, but we've been augmenting the human form for a long time, as anyone wearing glasses or contact lenses will have experience of first-hand. Hugely successful Cochlear implants improve hearing in profoundly deaf people. Artificial hearts are frequently used as a bridge organ during heart transplants, and have sustained patients for years in lieu of a working organ.

Dramatic strides have also been made in limb-replacement technology for amputee patients. New limbs model the complex actions of a limb, of course, but the discipline also incorporates the development of machine-brain interfaces to allow the amputee to control their new limb with thought. This currently means painstakingly wiring nerves to the replacement limb—a difficult and expensive process for now.

Existing technologies are basic compared to the metal soldiers of Civilization: Beyond Earth, but it's a burgeoning area of science. It seems inevitable that we'll reach the dilemma faced by Beyond Earth's factions: when augmentations are better than our existing bodies, will we embrace machines completely like the Supremacy player, or hold onto our fleshy human forms like the Purity player?

Terraforming

The Purity affinity is dedicated to preserving humanity in its current state. They view the new planet they've settled on as a new paradise, a second Earth which can offer the species a second chance.

That means changes need to be made to the new world. While the planet is habitable, it isn't hospitable. Clouds of deadly miasma blanket the terrain and indigenous creatures patrol their territory. The Harmony player will seek to preserve the natural order of the planet, but others would rather change it to be more Earth-like.

That process is known as terraforming. It's largely a theoretical concept at the moment, but serious scientific thought has been given to the idea of reshaping worlds within our solar system to make them habitable.

Mars is a particularly interesting candidate, as it once held surface water. Its lack of magnetic atmosphere means it's currently too exposed to solar winds to settle on, but the introduction of huge amounts of greenhouse gases could theoretically create an atmosphere that could trap heat. The addition of water and earthen microbiology could then create an environment that would support plantlife. The oxygen output would eventually render the atmosphere breathable.

Another popular terraforming technique involves the construction of vast domes, which operate as miniature, man-made atmospheres and contain within them the gases and temperature conditions needed to support life. One of these actually exists on Earth. The Biosphere 2 is a huge biome in Oracle, Arizona that, for a time, enclosed a sealed artificial atmosphere and ecosystem. Scientists lived inside these systems for years, studying precise changes in the chemical makeup of the air and resident plantlife. Those experiments were shut down after the isolated scientists involved fell out and split into factions.

Luckily, the planets you settle on in Civilization: Beyond Earth already have an atmosphere, but it's sensible to build a small army of worker drones to build farms and scientific facilities near your cities. Satellites are also a useful terraforming tool, and can be used to burn away that inconvenient miasma.

Habitable planets and extraterrestrial life

Alien life is everywhere in Civilization: Beyond Earth. Every city starts out as a fragile outpost that must survive in a climate full of roaming siege worms, and other local critters. The Contact victory condition invites you to make contact with a technologically advanced alien race. How close are we to meeting an alien species?

Let's start small. Scientists have long suspected that Mars may hold the fossilised remains of bacteria, which could have thrived on Martian water. The findings so far have been inconclusive, but that hasn't stopped scientists from looking further afield. One hypothesis suggests that the chemical components of DNA and RNA—the building blocks of life—could form in outer space and travel on asteroids, giving impacted planets a better chance of generating life. Earlier this year NASA also revealed a database for tracking polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the universe, which some theories suggest played a significant role in the origin of life on Earth.

But what about the search for sentient beings? Obviously, they haven't been discovered yet, but the SETI project is devoted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. They monitor electromagnetic radiation for signs of alien transmissions and radio telescopes scour the cosmos for any sign of intelligent signals. In Civilization: Beyond Earth you have to decipher the Progenitor code to make contact with the alien race, which might seem convenient, but we've been attaching cryptic guides to our cosmic location to our spacecraft for decades just in case they fall into the hands of a alien race beyond the edges of the solar system.

Astronomers, meanwhile, are busy searching for terrestrial planets similar to our own elsewhere in the galaxy. It's thought that the nearest star to ours, Alpha Centauri, could support planets capable of sustaining life, but the most recently discovered and potentially habitable planet is Kepler-186f, orbiting the red dwarf, Kepler-186, a mere 500 light years away.

That's just a small taste of the scientific basis for Civilization: Beyond Earth's most exciting technologies. Which piece of Beyond Earth tech would you most like to see developed in the real world?

Here's the opening cinematic to the future-set 4X strategy Civilization: Beyond Earth. You may as well watch it now, because, in game, you'll only see it for the few seconds it takes to hit Escape and get to the menu. While Civ's historical intros were geared towards the grandiose—of the permanence of legacy and the weight of rule—this sci-fi cinematic is more about the hope of a better tomorrow.

Of course, that tomorrow could potentially be about an augmented machine-man race that goes back to invade Earth. But don't let that detract from the poignancy of the video.

Civilization: Beyond Earth is out next week, on 24 October. For more, check out our hands-on impressions, either in video or written word format.

Developers interviewing developers? This will not stand*! Actually this chat between Sid Meier and XCOM: Enemy Unknown designer Jake Solomon is funny and interesting, and a rare chance to see Sid Meier in the wild.

Solomon initially tries to establish whether or not Meier is a Canadian spy, and moves on to quiz the Yoda of strategy design on his origins and inspirations. It's particularly charming to hear about the humble origins of Microprose. This anecdote reveals how much the games industry has exploded since the early days of the medium, though tools like Game Maker and Unity have kept this spirit alive.

"When people ask me 'how do you become a game designer?' well you just sit down and type a game into your computer and you're a game designer. That's really the way it was back then. I did all the art, the sound, the programming, printed the manuals on my printer and put them in a baggy, and sent Bill off to sell them... we did games in about two months back in those days, maybe three if it's, like, in depth."

The video was recorded at Firaxicon, a convention for fans of Firaxis' long line of strategy games.

*When devs interview devs the results are often interesting. Check out the Tone Control podcast for more of that sort of thing.