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Humble Choice - April 2024
April 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.
| Steam Page | Opencritic | Steam Recent/All | Operating Systems | Steam Deck | ProtonDB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Victoria 3 | 82 | 67/66 | Win, Mac, Linux | 🟨 Playable | ✅ Native |
| The Callisto Protocol | 67 | 75/64 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🎖️ Platinum |
| HUMANKIND: Definitive Edition | 79 | 69/66 | Win, Mac | 🟨 Playable | 🟨 Gold |
| Fashion Police Squad | 78 | 92 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🎖️ Platinum |
| Terraformers | 80 | 89/88 | Win, Mac, Linux | âś… Verified | âś… Native |
| Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga | 84 | 95/95 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🎖️ Platinum |
| Coromon | 73 | 77/87 | Win, Mac | ✅ Verified | 🟨 Gold |
| The Excavation of Hob's Barrow | 84 | 90/93 | Win, Mac, Linux | âś… Verified | âś… Native |
Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?
Some interesting meta drama for this one:
Humble Choice rosters usually get leaked a few days before their actual release. The leak for this month, put out a few days ago, was this.
A lot of people rightfully called it an April Fool's joke. Returnal is quite a surprising headliner alone, to say nothing of it being paired with Assassin's Creed: Valhalla and Noita.
It did have some credibility though: the information came from leakers who had successfully leaked correct rosters in the past, and those leakers confirmed that the image did come directly from Humble's own servers.
Of course, now that the bundle's out, we can see that it was incorrect: the only game that was successfully identified was Fashion Police Squad. So, what happened?
Well, assuming everyone is to be believed about this (and that's a GIGANTIC assumption), the way the leaks were previously found was that Humble used a predictable URL scheme for storing their Choice promotional images. As such, people could simply use the same URL as the previous month but change, say,
MARCH.pngtoAPRIL.pngand get the new image.It is thus theoretically possible that Humble deliberately planted that image on their servers, knowing that it would get leaked, as some sort of joke or misdirection or counter to the leakers.
It's also entirely possible that people are lying about this whole thing and the "leak" was just a fake mockup. Either way, it's interesting.
Personally, I believed that the leaked lineup was too good to be true and likely wasn't what we'd actually get, but I will admit that when I checked the titles this afternoon, I was genuinely hoping that Returnal would be there.
Seems like intentionally leaking a lineup of games that was dramatically better than what they ended up offering would be counterproductive to them. That leads me to doubt that as the explanation… but then companies have screwed up many times worse than that before so anything is possible!
Definitely agree. It feels like, if you're going to telegraph a great fake lineup, then you should have a comparably good one for the actual reveal.
That said, it's entirely possible that it wasn't a genuine effort from Humble's marketing department but instead maybe just one employee deciding to go off-script and be a little cheeky in the long-standing spirit of April Fools' on the internet, and I can genuinely appreciate that.
your thought process was exactly the same as mine was LOL I'm interested in seeing if the leak was actually supposed to be a honeypot or something.
Humankind is, in my personal opinion, much better than Civilization. It feels to me like the developers played Civ 6, then decided to make a game that solves every single frustration they experienced. They've massively improved warfare, diplomacy, exploration, trade, and even something as simple but important as moving units across the map. And the system of changing civilizations for every new era means you have a chance to catch up with a snowballing AI. Some may prefer the several victory types in Civ over the score-based victory in Humankind, but at least you won't be surprised by a sudden religious victory from that AI you didn't pay close enough attention to. Also, they've practically done away with the waiting time upon ending your turn, so Humankind plays so much faster than Civ!
A contender for the most underrated game on Steam.
In civ games I tend to roleplay as the civ and headcanon its development & interactions with other civs. How well does Humankind work for that? Do the civs feel like cohesive growing things, or does the era change 'reset' the feel? Is pacifism a legitimate way to play or is it assumed that the player will start wars every game?
I've always been curious about playing it, and this deal seems like a great way of getting the game.
EDIT: Do the AI civs feel like they have reliable personalities that determine how they interact with the world around them?
I imagine it would be much the same.
Cohesive. When you reach a new era and chose a new civilization, you unlock a new special ability and a new unique unit and district, but you also keep your old ones.
Legitimate. But you will need to maintain an army, or the AI will declare wars on you. Especially on higher difficulties.
They're reliable. They have a set of character traits that guide their play.
Thanks! I'll definitely have to give it a go.
I believe you are the first person I've ever seen argue it's superior to Civ. I haven't played it myself but had been turned off by the word of mouth around the game
This is good to hear. I loved Endless Legend, but was put off Humankind because of the reviews, which is a continual source of "Maybe not" for me whenever it's on sale.
As a big fan of Civ V, I really wanted to try Humankind, so that's that at least. Callisto Protocol looked pretty good too, just heard it was overpriced at launch so at 12$ it seems pretty good! Fashion Police Squad looks like the star of the show, tbh!
As an aside, there was a crazy good bundle that was "leaked" that included Noita, Returnal, and AC:Valhalla which looked way too good to be true, but it made it's way to the front page of Slickdeals yesterday which was kinda lame, especially cuz it was posted by a staff member.
Apologies for the multiple top-level comments, but I have one more separate thought:
What's up with "Humble Choice" being the continued branding?
It was "Humble Monthly", then they switched to "Humble Choice" with the setup being that you chose a specific number of games from among the available titles. They sold different subscription plans that let you get different numbers of games. It was a confusing and friction-heavy setup.
Then they eventually simplified, and now everybody gets all the games again. It's still called "Humble Choice" though, and each month I still have to "select" my games one by one despite being able to get all of them, every time.
Is it just inertia keeping the "Choice" name going? They didn't want to change over the game selection code for the website?
I went back in my account, and January 2022 was the last month where the actual choice of games applied. Everything since then has been the full bundle with no choice.
This isn't a complaint or anything (I genuinely like Humble Choice more than most commenters I see talking about it online) -- more just a curiosity.
You could say it's a choice as in "here's a selection of games you're getting this month. It's our choice."
I would imagine the players' choice thing could have caused a problem, especially because most of the time there is a pretty clear cascade of wantability to them. Maybe they were compensating the creators by who chose their games and it would deeply disadvantage the ones near the bottom of the list.
Wait what? This is the first I've heard that they don't still have players choose the games they want, and instead they give you everything. They really should've renamed it, because I bet a lot of people who only hear about it in passing aren't aware you get to pick all the games.
Maybe it's like "choice cut" of steak where it's supposed to be the best cut of steak lol. I do think the decision to select games one by one is deliberate though, to slow down the delivery of keys or something.
I'm actually really excited about this one! A new Wadjet Eye game is always good news; I don't really follow any gaming press so seeing a new one is always a welcome surprise. I'm kind of surprised that it's the last one on the list, but i guess I shouldn't have been.
Symphony of War has a terribly generic name, but I'm actually probably most excited about it. From my cursory glance it looks more-or-less exactly like the tactics game I would have designed.
I've never been excited about any of Paradox's games, but I think I might give theirs a chance this time around.
I will play Fashion Police Squad based entirely on the name.
This is a weaker month for me.
Fashion Police Squad looks great (the GDQ run of it was good fun) and I can excitedly place The Excavation of Hob's Barrow on my pile of Wadjet Eye games that I'll convince myself I'll play one day (because I've genuinely loved many of their games) but never seem to actually get around to (because for some reason starting up a point-and-click adventure feels... stuffy to me -- despite liking them I'm never in a "point-and-click mood" anymore).
Outside of those there isn't much that interests me, and even from a zoomed out perspective the bundle seems a bit less flashy than most (the games' review scores seem lower than what usually gets in), but it's hard to tell if I'm feeling let down simply because there was a part of me, way in the back of my brain, that fought my skepticism and genuinely did hope that Returnal would be the headliner.
For people into strategy and management games, which is decidedly not me, this seems like a good purchase between Victoria 3, HUMANKIND, and Terraformers. I offered my friend my Victoria 3 key and he was elated, and my husband, the big Civilization V fan, is getting HUMANKIND. I do genuinely enjoy being able to give games away, so that helps make up for my lack of personal interest in the titles.
I get your adventure game thing. It’s something that I can’t do unless I am able to put a lot of time and concentration in unless it’s a particularly story-centric game. Wadjet Eye games get something of a pass because they tend to be short. Even then the slower pace they require tends to pull at my patience rather quickly.
Glad it's not just me!
I've felt my tastes in videogames drift over time to games that are less demanding of my attention and focus and are more satisfying in moment-to-moment gameplay. Despite the appeal of these though, they don't have a lot of staying power. I often forget about them shortly after I stop playing them.
Meanwhile, I still remember and love the Blackwell series. I played through ALL five games in the series -- TWICE! They have a resonance and longevity to them that I genuinely cherish. I just checked the release dates, and Blackwell Epiphany, the last game in the series, came out almost a decade ago (April 24, 2014). Those games have stuck with me for a decade! That's incredible!
Many of my favorite games of all time are games like those, but, for some reason, I never opt to play stuff like that anymore. Ever.
Part of me thinks that I've done a number on my attention and that I've, despite getting older, genuinely regressed in that area. Another part of me thinks that I seek more immediately satisfying games as a way from detoxing from a stressful job and life. A third part of me thinks all of this is just me trying to find excuses for my own "bad" habits.
I'm not sure what the answer is (if any), all I know that as much as I value the idea of sitting down with a game like that, I never actually do in practice.
You might want to give Primordia a try. I think it's got about the perfect balance of narrative to gameplay, so it's a bit easier to get through than most.
It might help also to actually schedule some time to play. Pull off a block of time where you can turn down the blinds and leave the phone off. I kind of feel like I need that for all kinds of games these days.
I appreciate the pointers!
I’ve actually played Primordia. Unavowed is the one I’ve had queued up for a while now. Not sure if this is actually the case at all, but at first glance it reminds me of Resonance, which I loved.
I played about 3 hours of Callisto Protocol (got it for free with PS Plus) and I really liked it.
However I found a new obsession shortly after (Wingspan and Lost Ruins of Arnak) so I never came back to it. I can't recommend it yet, but it's worth at least checking out.