Image credit: Amplitude Studios

Amplitude has announced Humankind 2, a sequel to the quietly popular Civ-like 4X game Humankind, during the Gamescom Opening Night Live pre show this evening.

The trailer was mostly a bit of a mood piece, with a few brief snippets of gameplay at the end. Here's the blurb though to shed a little more light on it.

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Humankind will be "a new take on historical strategy", per Amplitude, and brings with it "new progression systems, innovative features, enhanced visuals, a modernized UI, and gameplay improvements."

"With each new Era," we're told, "players can adopt a culture that expands and deepens the identity of their civilization, unlocking exclusive customs through rich cultural progression trees. As these cultural influences combine, they create a civilization unlike any other, delivering unprecedented levels of personalization, consistency, and continuity throughout the ages.

"Each evolution brings fresh opportunities to redefine your empire's future: follow the historical path or diverge from it to create a story entirely your own. Humankind 2 also introduces new stories from around the world, from the Saqqaq and the Etruscans to the Scythians and many more, creating a richer and more historically grounded world to explore...

"A changing climate transforms the strategic map across the ages. Adapt your cities and economy to shifting biomes, protect vital resources, and weigh short-term growth against consequences that may endure for generations."

As with previous Amplitude games, this'll be a developer-alongside-community-feedback job, a bit of a bespoke Early Access thing, involving their Amplifiers program, which you can sign up for if you're keen.

It's set to release in 2027, and that's about all we know. I reviewed the first Humankind game and thought it was pretty good, for what it's worth, though the little tweaks it made to lean game more towards authenticity also tended to nudge it a bit further away from the actual fun. Though, like so many 4X games these days, it evolved significantly after launch. Some more tweaks - that climate change element sounds intersting - might be all the sequel needs to kick on to the next level, though it does look rather similar to the last one from its first few screens.

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