They Are Billions is a single-player game that’s all about survival. Yes it’s a game about the zombie apocalypse (go ahead and roll your eyes, I’ll allow it), but it’s challenging and fun enough to be worthy of your time. Trust me. I sunk four hours into this game without even realizing it.
Currently in Early Access on Steam, They Are Billions is city-building race-against-the-clock survival game. Players must manage the economics of a growing settlement while also attending to the defenses of the settlement. Neglecting the latter leaves the door open for the zombies to stroll on in and quickly decimate the population.
The zombies spawn randomly around the map, and it only takes a few seconds of them clawing unattended at a building to to transform the inhabitants of the building to blood-thirty zombies themselves. In seconds, a settlement can go from quiet refuge to a bustling metropolis of flesh-hungry citizens.
The longer a settlement exists, the more zombie attention it will attract. The trick is to quickly establish a strong economy in order to afford the necessary defenses to repel the ever-increasing zombie attacks. Walls, soldiers, and traps all must be strategically constructed to deter the attacks and delay the inevitable. Eventually, the settlement will succumb to the zombie onslaught and you’ll watch as everything you built so hard is trashed. It’s frustrating, but with each playthough you’ll learn a bit more about how to establish your settlement’s economy and how to best deploy your defenses.
They Are Billions, as of this writing, has no tutorial, so your first few attempts will likely end in swift defeat. However, the mechanics of the game are not complex, and I was able to obtain a firm understanding of the core aspects of the game by the time the zombies overran my first settlement. My second settlement lasted almost four times longer; learning how to play They Are Billions is not difficult, which makes me that much more likely to return to it, once I eventually burn out.
As the game is in Early Access, I expect additional content and developer updates in the coming weeks and months. Currently, They Are Billions features a Survival Mode (which is the aforementioned experience), and a Campaign Mode is expected to be released in Spring of 2018. I’ll certainly keep Epic Brew updated with any major updates to They Are Billions.
As things stand now, They Are Billions is a very promising game, even in Early Access.
[They Are Billions official website]
