They Are Billions

It's a smartly designed game at its core, despite the distractions. Just like a lone zombie can bring about your demise, sometimes one strong idea is enough.

With permadeath and razor-sharp margins for error, the title caters to RTS veterans and survivalists hungry for challenge

I’m going to give the game a Bestest Best sticker

They Are Billions offers an almost perfect gameplay loop, mixing tower-defence with city building and exploration, as you balance resource-management, defence and offense, all against your ever-impending doom at the hands of a world infested with the undead. The only downside to a game that looks and sounds great, offering a tense experience in a compelling setting, is a campaign that doesn't fully make-use of the gameplay loop perfected by Numantian Games, leaving the campaign feeling weak, compared to the survival mode, which is the real draw.

They Are Billions resuscitates the RTS genre from its staleness by introducing the simple, yet radical idea of a pause button in a single-player game.

They Are Billions does a lot of things great. The survival twist of a city-builder is unique, and lots of fun. Dealing with the huge waves is always as fun as it is stressful, including the huge final waves. Things that hold the game back are difficulty playing a computer game on console controls, and various UI and graphics issues as well as slowdown. This being said, it's a solid and unique RTS title.

They Are Billions is one of the first strategy games that use keyboard and mouse on console, it's interesting because of that. Otherwise we get slightly repetitive game where we need to repel hordes of enemies, using our tiny army. You'll loose, it's just a matter of time.

The fusion of genres in They Are Billions is brilliant, very solid and fun. It is also a game that does not make concessions in terms of difficulty, but that is fair to the player, since it depends on him being prepared for each zombie wave. Recently console versions got the same Story Mode than PC by a free update. Any lover of RTS, should try the game.

They Are Billions boasts strong central ideas about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to industrialize in the face of grave danger. This is done incredibly well, from the aesthetics to the music and especially the upgrade trees. All of these work in tandem so well that it's cool to see, but unfortunately, the follow-through for the console version isn't done well enough. This on its own is pretty damning, and coupled with the strange aesthetics makes the game considerably less enjoyable. The PC version may run better with the controls, interface and menus.

Overall, with a slightly higher than the expected price point of £19.99, I wouldn’t recommend you take a punt on the game if you’re slightly interested in the genre and/or theme. This game is for fans of the RTS genre who are looking for a challenge and I’m sure that the game will build a cult following of hardcore RTS fans, however with no tutorial and campaign to support newcomers to the genre, I’d give the They Are Billions a Thumb Culture Bronze Award.