Humankind – PC

You begin by choose one of ten paths of development to follow, growing and succeeding as you progress. The game is fairly flexible compared to some of its contemporaries, in that you can try out a path of progress and then change it if it seems not to be working out. Another point to bear in mind is that neighbouring civilisations will influence your people and make demands of you.

When this happens, you can choose to submit to their requests, or double down and take out your neighbours, subjugating them to your will! If you want to fight other peoples for their possession, resources and land, you can ransack them, fight them for their mines or simply claim the land by building an outpost – but be careful as it is all too easy to find yourself an accidental warlord if you are too successful!

At the end of each era, you choose from another 10 cultures, accurately showing how empires and cultures rise, flourish and then give way to the next big thing. At every transition, your existing culture does not die away completely. Instead, you carry enough traits and features from your current way of life to create an accurate and unique melting pot.

You can customise your own appearance quite minutely, but you will always be an imaginary person as you cannot take on the persona of a real historical character, as the real world that shaped them offers vastly different influences and ideas in your world.

Build Your Celebrity

The game is engrossing as it is not simply a numbers game where sheer numbers will win out – you can have a small army and limited resources, but still outfox a larger army with cunning, careful thought and planning. This encourages you to scout out the terrain, spot natural bottlenecks and encourage your soldiers to never give up, never surrender!

You cannot ‘win’ per se, but you can succeed by being famous! Score points by building ‘Fame’ which you do, firstly, by building holy sites, discovering world wonders, or other ‘world deeds’, as all of these are known, or, secondly, by earning era stars. As mentioned above, the game is very flexible, so you can change the way you play if your strategies aren’t working out, or if you think of a better way to do it.

With era stars, there are a total of 126 stars available to you over the course of the game, at a rate of 21 stars per era. You must earn at least 7 stars in each to be able to proceed to the next level. Earn stars by researching technologies, killing enemies and, as in real life, earning money.

There are a 60 total cultures in the game, ten for each era. The various cultures include, amongst others: Egyptians, Greeks, Nubians, Libyans, Romans, Hittites, Harrapans, Babylonians, Assyrians, Germans, and Chinese, giving you a wide and diverse range of cultures to choose as you build and expand your civilisation.

Authoritarian or Liberal: You Choose

There are sliders to choose world outlook of your country, and with each twitch to one side or another you will create an impact on the country’s smooth running. Unlike in real life, which is much more nuanced, in the game, extremes can give more benefits, but otherwise these sliders give a reasonable overview of how societies work.

Geopolitical outlook – are you a nationalist patriot or a global villager?

economics – rampant I-got-mine capitalism or a more communal society?

culture – strict old-fashioned values or the embrace of progress?

government – authoritarian dictator or liberal lovie?