They Are Billions Preview - Can you build a base that survives the zombie apocalypse?

Building a foundation is the foundation on which many real-time strategy games are built. It can be said that this is the greatest strength of the genre and at the same time the greatest weakness. This is because it gives developers a familiar platform to build, a comfortable collection of gameplay mechanisms that allow creative ideas to appear elsewhere and thus enrich the experience in a variety of interesting ways. If these mechanisms are implemented without much attention or effort, building a foundation and thereby 'resource management' can also be a burden that keeps players from enjoying themselves.

Over the years there have been numerous games that have succeeded in throwing this aspect on the shovel, shifting the focus and making the familiar something else. They Are Billions is such a game. Where some titles are limited by playing defensively, digging you in, this is an essential part here that demands the full attention of the player. Not only because an early, upcoming light-footed enemy can disrupt your entire plan, but because your base is the game. In They Are Billions there is an operational center in the middle of your growing camp. If this is overflowing then your attempt ends and your citizens are forever doomed.

However, they are not hostile players who come to you. The billions in the title refer to the living dead who wander around on the map and continuously attack you in waves. Prior to each new attempt, you can adjust various aspects to suit your skill level and the experience you have gained. In addition, there are also different environments to play freely. According to the developer, you are bothered by the same number of zombies. The longer the jar is in terms of days, the easier it is to deal with the attacks, since you have more time to fight them. It is a convenient way to balance the difficulty level.

When you start a game, it quickly becomes clear that you are waiting for a challenge. It took us several failed attempts to master the basic gameplay. Just like in most real-time strategy games that are focused on building a base, you have to use the right building order to improve your efficiency at the beginning. If you do not do this, then you do not have the right units to turn off the first inevitable zombie wave. It quickly turns into a race to prepare military units and position them around your camp - alternating fast rangers with slower, more powerful soldiers.

However, upgrading your base is not a simple task and if there is a part where we think that They Are Billions can be improved, then it is the way buildings are linked to each other. In our view, this is still very skewed and balancing building your base with defensive supplies for your community is unnecessarily frustrating. For example, to make enough soldiers, you have to build a ridiculous number of tents to create workers, leaving your base feeling stuffed with small buildings standing in the way of other future buildings. The extensive design makes it slanderous to defend it well and that means that your focus is often divided, which can be fatal.

Like many comparable games, there are a number of interconnecting systems and you need to have a certain type of raw material to create a certain type of building. The setup does not always work well, because we often had the feeling that we spent too much time with unnecessary pressure. Can this be remedied? We hope so, because - apart from the somewhat messy design of building, where the design is diluted by micromanagement - we are very pleased with what They Are Billions is trying to do.

To begin with, the visual style is very solid. If you zoom to far, it can be difficult to distinguish friendly units from zombies, but buildings and units look great themselves - even though it is not always easy to guess their functionality based on how they look. Fortunately, you only suffer from that at the beginning. The game, however, has more than enough style and the grubby, oppressive atmosphere makes the whole thing exciting and intimidating. Something you want exactly with a game like this. However, you can always press space on the other side to pause the game and oversee your actions; a very useful option and one that we completely approve.

It only gets really exciting when you get past the start of the game and you have to defend your base against zombies. We still play on a relatively easy level of difficulty, but even that produced some interesting moments in which zombies attacked from all angles. However, we have just mastered the basic gameplay and when it becomes chaotic it feels like we are continually extinguishing fires everywhere. If the undead break through your defense and attack your central base, the end is almost certain. We did, however, enjoy enough intense moments while trying to keep the zombies at bay. In this sense, They Are Billions feels like a zombie horror game and the merger between the survival and real-time strategy gameplay proves unexpectedly appealing.

However, it is not perfect, but we can also argue that it is exactly on the right path. After a few months with the necessary finishing and updating of the balance, They Are Billions can become an excellent real-time strategy game. There is still work to be done, but there is enormous potential in this combination of genres. We look forward to seeing the game grow in the coming months.

Thanks for reading.

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