They Are Billions is a new Zombie Survival RTS game developed by Numantian Games, who have worked on Lords of Xulima previously. They Are Billions has garnered quite a bit of attention as of late, from well-known streamers playing the game, hitting the top sellers on Steam to selling over 200,000 copies in their early access state. Weβve seen similar success stories with more well-known genres with PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS, but with such a niche area Billions had quite a bit of work to do to pull in the attention it has.
In its current state, Billions only has a survival mode on offer, starting you off with the bare minimum to get the game going, with up to 150 days to progress your base to stave off the hordes of undead. You can select from various difficulties, in terms of horde size and time till the billion hordes. Population difficulties come in the forms of Easiest, Easy, Accessible, Challenging and Brutal, with each increase making the hordes larger, stronger and improving the horde sizes that spawn on the map. Game Duration similarly has the same difficulties with a deadline of 150, 120, 100 and 80 days until the final billion wave.
Depending on the difficulties you select, the length of a game will vary from a couple of hours to almost 5, along with pausing the game to plan ahead. You will also gain a score factor based on your difficulty, ranging from 3% to 370%, with a win of higher factors unlocking new maps to play on.
Billions is heavily focused on its RTS aspects, splitting gameplay into 2 halves. You have units that you can select with the mouse to give several commands to, like patrolling a set path or moving around the map. Units appear in a sort of tier and technology list, from rangers with bows, soldiers with guns to men with rocket launchers or Mechs.
Besides using units to scout, attack or defend you will also be building up a base of operations. You start off with a command centre, where you can create additional structures from, you will start off with tents for more villagers and workers, moving onto sawmills to produce wood and quarries to mine stone, iron and gold. All structures and units require you to spend resources, which come in the form of gold for your currency, wood, stone, iron and oil. Alongside those main resources, you will also require workers to work your structures or to be hired as units, food to feed workers and units and electricity to power your machines and facilities.
To continue your progression through a game, you are required to build workshops, wood, stone and finally a foundry. These buildings allow the player to research new building types, new units to control and upgrades to already existing buildings. Through research, you will unlock the better towers that are crucial to defence and doubling the output of farms for the food necessary to field more units.
The main aim of the survival mode is to basically survive, duh, and to do so you will need to expand your base and build up your defences. This is where layers of walls come into play, you will need to strategically wall off entrances to your base and place crossbow towers, shocker towers and Executor turrets to deal with the oncoming hordes. It will, of course, be up to each individualβs preference on defence make-up until people start making precise guides to combat the hordes. Though, currently, the maps are slightly randomised so it can be hard to have a setup for everything.
As it stands, the current soundtrack on offer is very limited, with 1 track playing throughout the entire game, only changing during horde attacks or the main menu. The game can feel a bit boring and empty at times due to the lack of music, though it can fit its dreary apocalyptic style. Combined with the music, the sounds effects are on point, reminding me of the old Command & Conquer days.
The graphical style of Billions is very pleasing to the eye, going for a slightly cartoony look with excellent use of shadows, bloom and colours. This style does allow the game to run hundreds and thousands of zombies all at once with relative ease, but the final horde can cause it to slow down due to the sheer number of them at once.
One of the main complaints I have seen, and kind of agree with, is the difficulty of Billions. Setting it at accessible or higher causes the mid-game to become quite hard with the final horde seemingly impossible at times, with the randomised maps playing a huge factor into whether you can create an adequate defence or mining for resources. There were times where I was surrounded by forests, to only having 3 to my whole base in other games. The pathing of the zombies can also be quite unforgiving, causing them to pool all into one part of your defence, or spawning outside of the horde events with zombies that can spit or jump over walls, absolutely destroying your hopes of expansion without proper troops.
Overall, They Are Billions has had a great start to its development and early access release. Fans are loving it, and it is definitely one of those games where you say βJust another 5 minutesβ to only have yourself play for hours on end until the final wave. With a story mode on the way later in the development cycle, constant updates to balance, new buildings and mechanics, They Are Billions looks like itβll have a promising lifeβ¦ for a game full of undead that is.
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