Get Humankind's new DLC free for a limited time

Humankind, the Civ-like strategy game where you can change culture each time you move into a new era, has had a few add-ons since it released in 2021. DLC packs have added Cultures of Africa and Cultures of Latin America, and the Together We Rule expansion was all about winning friends and influencing people, bringing a "leverage" currency, an inter-empire forum to facilitate global democracy, agents, and six more cultures and wonders. The latest DLC, the Para Bellum Wonders pack, throws in another six wonders, and you can download it for free until May 10 on Steam and Epic.

Wonders are one way of earning fame, which determines who wins at the end of a campaign of Humankind, so they're a bit important. The six historical wonders added in Para Bellum are:

The Stables of Pi-Ramesses 
The Colosseum 
The Citadel of Alamut 
The Hôtel des Invalides 
The Kaiserliche Werft
The Pentagon

A solid variety of architectural accomplishments there, ranging from the 14th century BCE, when Pi-Ramesses was the capital of Egypt, to 1943, when the Pentagon was opened.

In his review of Humankind, Fraser Brown singled out the way cultures can be combined by switching to a new one in each era as an interesting design idea. "Individually, the faction design seems conservative," he wrote, "but when you start mixing them up things start to get a lot more exciting. There are a million possible combinations, encouraging a lot of number crunching, theorycrafting and experimentation. You've also got lots of religious tenets, available to pick whenever your religion ranks up, and culture-wide civics decisions, both of which pile on even more bonuses. Overpowered builds are inevitable with this many combos, and I much prefer it to perfect balance."

Alongside the release of the Para Bellum Wonders DLC comes the Vauban update, which adds beta Steam Workshop support to Humankind's existing support for mods via mod.io, as well as "Renounce All" and "Demand All" buttons for impatient diplomats, adjacency bonuses for some wonders, tweaks to the auto-resolve formula and a preview of how much damage units will take, AI improvements, and another wonder—the Brussels Town Hall. Here are the full patch notes.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.