Endless Space 2 and Endless Legend's endless Endless expansions are out now

It's a busy day for 4X fans. Announced just last week, new expansions have launched today for both space-empire builder Endless Space 2 and its more gravity-bound cousin Endless Legend. They're both excellent games (Endless Legend was RPS's Game Of The Year of 2014) that have only gotten better over time due to constant expansion & patching. Now seems a good time to give them a look if you've passed on them previously, as on top of the two new expansion releases, Amplitude's entire Endless series is free to try for the weekend, and steeply discounted to boot.

Endless Space 2's expansion is called Supremacy, and is focused on kicking over any and all sandcastles that don't belong to you. There's a new ship class - Behemoths - which are unsurprisingly very large and tough, and can be upgraded to defend or even destroy entire star systems. Supremacy also re-introduces the Hissho from the original Endless Space. While perhaps a little reductive, 'cranky samurai bird-people' should give you a rough idea of what their deal is. So long as they're winning fights, they grow stronger, but their pride is easily bruised by defeat.

Endless Legend's Inferno expansion is less straightforward. It introduces a new alien race - the Kapaku - to the gradually freezing planet of Auriga. Rather than hoping to escape offworld like many of the other races, the Kapaku's end-goal is to spread fiery volcanic terrain across the surface of the planet to better match their lost homeworld. Still inhospitable to other races, but at least it's not ice. The expansion also introduces the Dust Eclipse event to the game, which essentially turbo-charges every faction, messes with the weather and triggers strange events. Roll the dice.

All of this is accompanied by a series-wide sale and free weekend over on Steam, including quirky defensive roguelike spinoff Dungeon Of The Endless.  The original Endless Space has been slashed down to a tiny £1.49/€2/$2, while a bundle featuring the entire series and all expansions (minus today's releases) is £37/€46.67/$46.67. Apparently if enough man-hours are clocked across all Endless games over the weekend, everyone will be rewarded with bonus ship skins for Endless Space 2.

Today's expansions, Supremacy and Inferno, both weigh in at £9.89/€11.69/$11.69, or if you play both games, you can get them together for £17.58/€20.78/$20.78 here.