In the middle of the Ancient Era, I'm figuring out all sorts of things, from outposts and resource extraction to faith and cultural influence. It's complicated, so I'm going slowly (and losing out on potential growth due to misunderstandings), but I'm enjoying myself a lot and seeing a ton of potential in these systems, which are very nicely refined from Endless strategy games.

I played through a very slow (even for me) 10-turn session of Humankind, examining everything in the interface and following the tutorial (to whom I fibbed and said I had never played historical strategy before in order to get the fullest guide). It's quite appealing and moreish, which shouldn't come as a surprise, although I confess I was not nearly as interested in playing it as I was in Amplitude's Endless offerings (the Endless Space games in particular). I thought that the Civilization-like theming was dull in comparison and found the idea of shedding your entire cultural identity and choosing a new one at each era arbitrarily, without historical causality, to be a bizarre one. However, while I still think that it is, I'm enjoying the emphasis on causality. For example, once you reach the Neolithic era and leave behind nomadic ways of life, you gain access to the tech tree, and the description for the calendar explains that people began wanting to keep track of changes in the seasons once they stopped roaming and found themselves living in permanent settlements, which makes sense. I'm not suggesting that this is an incredible insight, but I like the Big History angle of Humankind—hell, the game starts by mentioning that the story of most of the universe is a dull progression of space rocks and that the first 4 billion years of our history just involves a soup of amino acids. It doesn't feel like edutainment, god forbid, but I appreciate this promise of causal substance, which goes a long way towards justifying Amplitude's choice to make this historical strategy game rather than, say, Engless Legend 2.

So far it's certainly fun just to explore the world, make discoveries, see what resources are about, and make plans. I went with the expansionist Assyrians when I reached the Ancient era because I had a convenient hex of horses right by my capital city that can fuel raiders once I learn domestication. I'm just hoping to stake as much claim to territory as I can before bumping into anyone else, which will surely cause a halt in my progress (war is always a waste of resources). The only thing that's a sticking point for me so far is that I felt encouraged to graduate from the Neolithic era to the Ancient era as soon as I completed an era growth star, but I can't help wondering whether I should have stayed at that level of growth and worked on more stars, like a pokémon declining to evolve. Turns out there's some debate about this; you can create huge population gains by milking the Neolithic opportunities for a while, although I'm not sure yet whether this is strategy or cheese.

The reason why I began playing Humankind now instead of waiting for 3 years of expansions is the Dia de los Muertos event with its time-limited rewards. It's not clear to me yet how difficult the event's challenges will be for me, but I have to say that the built-in event interface is slick. I'm so used to events only being announced as game news in Steam, with nothing in-game to show what's happening or how much long it's happening for, that I was surprised by this. Of course, while I really am trying not to be biased against Humankind, it's hard for me to see this and not want an Endless Space 3 with shiny event UI and other account-wide progression features. Despite my thematic leanings, I'm looking forward to playing more of this.

I have now collected every item and defeated Ridley again. (It's still strange that the credits shows your completion time but not your item rate. Isn't that tradition?) I'd like to play Dread this weekend, but first I hope I can pull together a review from all of these impressions.

GM Devil's Lair with Gun and Gear. We only finished one run, but I lucked into what seems like a PvE god roll for the Adept Plug One with feeding frenzy, reservoir burst, and great range.

There's a new seasonal structure creating an incentive to play regularly, so I imagine I'll be at this quite a bit more now.

Mindlessly chasing down these item markers on the map is really making it obvious how monotonous both the level design and the enemies are. This is a very tedious experience, which is why I'm only finishing off one area each day.

Grinding out the Festival of the Lost. I really need to stop procrastinating these things and killing myself to do them at the last minute.

Played through the Halloween event assignment. Took me a minute to remember how to play, but I had fun joining with groups.

I'm still working on item completion, one area at a time.

Some of the optional upgrades require using a technique that launches you a long distance using a power bomb while attached to a wall with the spider ball. The game does not teach or communicate to you anywhere that this is a thing that you can do, and there is no precedent for it in the series. This is crap.

A number of the convoluted puzzle rooms guarding collectibles can simply be skipped once you have the hatchling. This is crap.

The unlockable Chozo Memories are cool, but it would have been a lot cooler if their story was told within the game.

I just meant to try the game out briefly and get the Halloween event skin unlock, but I was blown away and wound up playing up to halfway through Chapter 3. I was already into the concept of turning Snake into a sort of persistent rhythmic puzzle crawl, but the execution is so good. Puzzles are clever, the continuously evolving music is excellent, and the way you progress through the temple/dungeon is very cool, with loops and new paths contingent upon increases in length and even later chapters passing back through earlier spaces from a different perspective. There's even a story being told here? I had no idea! This is ambitious, and it's solid; what's here so far is playable and strong despite being in Early Access. But I think I like it too much to play any more before it's done! I'll wait for this meal to reach its full length before I chow down.