Civilization 7 launched to mixed reactions earlier this year, with players pushing back against the mandatory culture-switching mechanic that forced a fresh start at every age. Now Amplitude Studios is making its move. The French developer behind the original Humankind has pulled back the curtain on Humankind 2, and the timing couldn’t be more pointed.
The hands-off demo focused heavily on the culture system — reworked from the first game but with a crucial difference. You can still adopt new cultures as eras progress (Egyptians becoming Berbers, Romans, or English if circumstances allow), but it’s no longer mandatory. Your society is built from building blocks picked up along the way, and you can drag a single unalloyed culture through the ages if you prefer. Seventy cultures total, spread across six eras, each with its own upgrade tree.
Biomes Shape Everything
The other major talking point from the demo is how climate and biome intersect with culture. Humankind 2’s vision of history is dialectical — the biome shapes the culture, the culture transforms the biome, and the cycle continues. Climate isn’t static either. Natural and unnatural disruptions occur depending on chance and player activity, turning biomes more arid or humid over time.
Each tribe gets a “First Tale” linked to the territory where they begin — founding myths that act as kernels for the full-fledged cultures that develop later. These provide buffs and changes to tiles and citizen roles. Amplitude says the different starting biomes will have a dramatic impact on how your game unfolds, especially once you drill down into the “Adaptations” trees that deepen your culture’s affinity for its chosen environment.
Key mechanic: Historical climate shifts like the Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age can occur in-game, turning biomes more arid or humid and potentially wearing out your chosen adaptations.
Culture as Skill Tree
Amplitude is moving away from what it called “monolithic” cultures in Humankind 1 — “a unity, a building, and a bonus, basically” — toward something more skill-tree-based. Every culture has a set of customs you can unlock, divided by tier, which you equip and activate in a limited number of bonus slots.
As eras pass, your culture approaches “Crossroads” points where you can diverge based on three paths: common history (free), shared land (costs culture points), or foreign contact (costs even more). New cultures unlock new customs, new city aesthetics, and new roles — Humankind 2’s take on a pop and job system for your cities.
The culture progression system has been redesigned so that every culture gets its own upgrade tree, and its traits, customs, and bonuses remain across eras. The cultures and progression options you’ll be offered depend on choices made in exploration, diplomacy, and the Adaptation system, so you probably won’t be able to wrangle an invincible omniculture.
Learning from Civ 7’s Mistakes
The demo showed Egyptian settlers making a home in snowier climes, building ice-capped pyramids but facing chilly starvation without Adaptation help. Meeting the Thule peoples of nearby Greenland opened up the chance to learn more environment-appropriate skills, leading to the formation of the world’s first Egyptian dogsledding units. The transition between cultures felt less abrupt than Civ 7’s equivalent, more like a natural evolution of your civilization’s journey.
2027 Release Window
No specific release date beyond 2027, but eager alt-history beavers can join the Humankind 2 Insiders Program for the chance to playtest early versions. The game launches with scenario-based tutorials rather than dropping players straight into a planetary sandbox, aiming for accessibility without simplifying the mechanics.
Whether Humankind 2 can dethrone Civilization as the go-to historical 4X remains to be seen. But with Civ 7 still working through its reputation problems and Amplitude clearly paying attention to what the community wants, the 4X throne has never looked more vulnerable.
