Do you like pretending to be the god-king of mankind? Well, good news! The fine folks at Amplitude Studios (Endless Legend) have launched Humankind, their self-proclaimed “magnum opus.” Humankind is a 4X strategy game, so it’s for fans of games like Sid Meier’s Civilization VI or Stellaris. It’s out now, and while it is primarily a single-player experience, you may be wondering about the game’s multiplayer features. In this article, we run through what to expect from the game’s multiplayer suite, if that is something that you’re thinking about before you drop your hard-earned coin on Humankind.
Multiplayer Features Explained
As well as having a robust single-player offering, Humankind offers a multiplayer mode for up to eight players at once. To access it just click on Play on the main menu, and then Multiplayer. Once you hit the lobby screen, you can choose to join another game with strangers, or type in a Lobby ID in the top-left corner to join a friend’s lobby, if they have a code to share.
If you’d like to host a game, you can just click New Game and set up your own multiplayer match. You’ll see the Lobby ID in the top part of the screen, which you can copy with the button just next to it and send to your friends so they can join the game. Once everyone’s in, you should see all of the leaders lined up, depending on the number of competitors you’ve chosen to play with. You can allow spectators if you wish, and change the permissions of the lobby from public to private if you don’t want random people joining the lobby.
On the left-hand side of the screen, you’ll also be able to choose the world size, the pace of gameplay and the difficulty of the match before you start, with extra options inside each node. You can then pick the map you want to play on and the downloadable content you’d like to use in the game. Once you’re happy with all of that, you can ready up and start playing Humankind in multiplayer. Just keep in mind before you kick things off that it is purely player vs player multiplayer only at the moment.
At present, there’s no cooperative mode or team creation setting in multiplayer. It makes sense, given the focus on building a unique, personal civilization in Humankind. It’s unclear whether cooperative multiplayer features will arrive in the future, but this is the situation for now at least.
According to Humankind’s Steam page, your leader avatar’s aesthetic will evolve as you play the game, and their visual style can persist in multiplayer matches. This means you can give your friends an idea of what kind of dictator they’re going to be up against by customizing your leader before you enter a multiplayer match. One of the avatar sets available to those who buy the Digital Deluxe Edition is Edgar Allan Poe, if you want to strike gothic fear into their hearts!
