Humankind by Amplitude Studios — OpenDev, A First Look
Two months ago Amplitude Studios, the company behind hit 4X and strategy games such as Endless Space and Endless Legend, announced a new program to better involve the gaming community in development of their future games. They called this new program OpenDev.
Getting feedback as early as possible from our players has always been our way of creating the best games we can. In fact, we designed the GAMES2GETHER platform and program 10 years ago to fill that missing link between our dev team and our players.
Today, we’re very excited to present OpenDev: a new way for players to get early access into our developing games so they can help us make sure we’re on the right path.
The first title to use this program is the upcoming strategy game — and potential Civilization competitor — Humankind. Today, July 30 2020, that program kicks off and I was invited by Amplitude to take part. So let’s take a look into what OpenDev is about, and then dig into Humankind and get a first look at this highly anticipated new strategy title!
Is OpenDev just another pay-for-beta or early access scheme?
The first thing a lot of gamers are going to think is, “Great, yet another Early Access scheme to get beta testers that pay money”. The truth however is that OpenDev is actually more akin to the old closed beta periods that “classic” MMO games used to have. During these closed betas a limited pool of players, selected based on questionnaires, would be given free access to the game where they would often conduct focused testing of specific content often with the members of the dev team online and in game with them. You didn’t need to pre-purchase the game to do this, you only had to sign up and answer some questions.
OpenDev is a lot like those old closed betas. Anyone can sign up, no purchase necessary. You fill out a questionnaire and from that information and probably some randomization, a pool of players is picked for each phase of testing. In each phase there is a specific scenario to play and give feedback on and then a survey at the end.
Humankind Scenario 1 — Towers of Babylon
The first scenario for Humankind starting today through Monday is called Towers of Babylon.
Initial Thoughts
Installing the game was quick and easy through Steam and it started right up with no long delays. The resolution initially was set to a standard 1920x1080, but was easily changed in the settings menu and even in this early state it appears that ultrawide 3440x1440 works fine which is a bonus!
At first start there was even a special video played welcoming the player to OpenDev and explaining the program. I thought this was a very nice and personal touch!
Launching into the scenario it was clear that Humankind’s design and UI is heavily influenced by Amplitude’s Endless series of games, which is a good thing because those games have regularly been held up for incredible UI and UX design!
At the start of the scenario we are presented with a screen showing what our objectives are, and then let loose.
Interface and Controls
I did stumble at first with the camera, as I expected standard WASD controls which was reinforced by the fact that when I pressed D the camera did in fact move right, but WAS did nothing. Confused, I tried the arrow keys and those worked. Opening up the settings I saw that the keybinding setup for the camera was in fact a very strange Z/S/D/Q for Up/Down/Right/Left. For now I will leave it as such and use the arrow keys just in case there is a reason for that. Left click and drag also lets you grab and pan the map which felt very natural to me and is what I ended up using the most.
While there was no in your face tutorial or anything, I found getting started to be pretty self explanatory if you’ve ever played Endless Legend or Endless Space, or any other strategy game. Also as you do things there are tips and popups that help you understand plus plenty of tooltips all over the place as expected.
One thing I really loved was when I zoomed out on the map and it smoothly shifted into this more board game view. Awesome!
To get things kicked off I started research on Carpentry to give me a base to build on, and started construction of a Millstone in the city to help increase my food intake. I also switched my city policy over to City Growth. My goal here was to get my city growing as fast as I could so I can more easily expand.
Combat
Moving my scout into a neighboring territory I ran across a frisky deer that wanted to pick a fight. Actually, I was the one that picked the fight because it surprised me that I could! This introduced me to the battle system which while basic felt solid enough to me. You basically go into a new mode where you are only focused on a small area of the map which is your battlefield. You can then preposition your individual units in the army and during the battle you alternate turns moving those individual units.
At first battles are limited to only 3 turns before they end, regardless of the outcome, but the tutorial popup indicated this would expand over time.
After the reindeer games I was told there is an animal lair nearby which is spawning all these deer that needs to be taken care of.
Natural Wonders
I came across two different natural wonders during my play. These work similar to how they do in Civilization and besides just being plain cool, they encourage you to try and get control of that territory.
Research
Research was straightforward. There is a quick list of the next items you can research and then you can go into a full research screen if you want to plan something out that takes multiple items. I did this to push towards the ability to work with bronze so I could exploit a strategic resource I found.
City Extensions & Infrastructure
In addition to the standard type of construction in a city, you can build both Extensions and Infrastructure to help the city expand and become more powerful. I will admit here that I didn’t even realize there was a distinction between the two until I had taken the survey where it asked me if I understand the difference. This is something I will need to replay and figure out.
From what I saw though I could build various “Quarters” such as Farmers Quarters or Artisans Quarters. These are placed in a specific tile around the city and provide bonuses based on location.
The map view while placing the extension gives you various bits of information to help you make the decision on where to place it which I found nice.
When placing an Artisans Quarters, the game helpfully showed me what the net effect of placing it in a given tile would be, so showing loss of food and production for example, as well as what the quarters would provide. White arrows pointing in from nearby existing extensions showed the synergy which would amplify the bonus from the new extension.
Extensions are powerful and fun, but limited by your city population. You can only have one extension per population count, so growing your city population is key to expanding with extensions.
One thing I did find confusing though was there isn’t any clear way — that I could find — to see what extensions you have already built in a city. Mousing over the actual tile will show there is an extension built on it, but nothing about the tile indicates that until you do, nor could I find a list or anything.
Outposts and Cities
In Humankind the method used to expand your empire is, to me, much more enjoyable and fun than the classic Civilization method of building a settler and dropping a city somewhere. The game map is broken out into territories which are a good many hex tiles in size. Sending any army to a new territory you can establish an Outpost. This takes time but does not destroy the army. Once the outpost is established you can then use it to work special tiles in the territory using a system similar to the city extensions, except these are built on specific special luxury or strategic resource tiles, and cost money to build not production. The outpost continues to be an outpost, which operates under different rules. You can choose to pay gold to develop it into a full blow city if you desire or leave it as an outpost with these extensions working tiles.
Expanding to a full city not only costs a large chunk of money, but a city requires an administrator to operate at peak efficiency. Without one the production output will be diminished. Outposts don’t suffer this issue, so there is a choice to be made there. Administrators are something you appear to get through technology and look to be a limited resource.
One thing the game notes is that outposts are fragile and that you should consider expanding them into a city or “attaching” nearby territories. Attaching a territory costs additional money and can affect stability. Attaching from what I saw cost half the cost of upgrading to a city, but this may increase with additional attached territories.
Additionally, establishing outposts costs money and the cost seems to go up with each one. I’m not sure if that is an increase every time or based on how many outposts you have. In other words if you have three outposts but upgrade one to a city does the cost of the next outpost change? Not sure. When founding my third outpost I needed 70 money which is a lot. Founding a city from an outpost costs 100 and my first outpost only cost something like 20 money.
When founding an outpost, the map shows the tile information on mouse over, but interestingly doesn’t if you can’t afford the outpost.
Events
At certain times of the game you will receive events which are decision you must make that will affect your empire for the rest of the game. These can’t be skipped, and will generally have various repercussions though not always immediately.
End of Game
For this first OpenDev scenario the game was limited to 30 turns. At the end I had expanded my empire a bit, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped to do. The game also gave me a nice little summary.
Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed this brief experience with the game and see it as having a lot of potential. The game is visually stunning, and while it is close enough to the standard for the genre that anyone who has played Civilization will be right at home here, it also adds its own twists and touches which make the game feel fresh such as the outpost handling as well as the ability to blend various cultures over time, which was something we didn’t get to see in this scenario.