They Are Billions

They Are Billions is not a strategy game.
It is a stress test for your soul.
On the surface, it looks like a steampunk RTS about building a colony and holding off zombie hordes. That is a lie. What it actually is: a slow, methodical exercise in dread where perfection is the minimum requirement for survival.
You do not lose this game in heroic last stands. You lose it because you missed a single tile.
One gap in a wall.
One ranger distracted.
One infected slipping through the fog.
That tiny mistake does not stay tiny. It turns into a full on in-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-fection in seconds. A house goes down. That spawns four more infected. They sprint. They snowball. They scream.
Suddenly your economy collapses, your defenses fold inward, and your entire colony becomes an accelerating meat grinder. The game does not pause. It does not warn you. It lets you watch.
The sound design deserves its own mention because it is pure psychological warfare. That first infection noise cuts straight through your spine. If you have played this game, you know the exact sound. Your brain recognizes it before your eyes do. By the time you react, it is already spreading.
Expansion is not exciting. It is terrifying. Every inch of fog of war is a potential death sentence. Clearing land feels like defusing bombs while blindfolded. The zombies are fast, relentless, and unforgiving, and the game demands obsessive attention to choke points, patrol routes, and redundancy. One line of defense is failure waiting to happen. Two lines means you are learning. Three lines means you might survive.
The brutality is not random. That is what makes it hurt. Every collapse is your fault. You knew better. You told yourself it would be fine. The game remembered.
When things go well, They Are Billions feels incredible. You are a paranoid god, tightening the screws, building a machine that holds back extinction by inches. When things go wrong, it is absolute annihilation. No recovery. No mercy. Only the realization that you have to start over and do it cleaner this time.
This game does not care about your time.
It cares about discipline.
If you want a forgiving RTS, walk away.
If you want a game where a single lapse turns into total systemic collapse, where tension never lets go, and where victory feels earned through fear and precision,
They Are Billions delivers brutality at a surgical level.
You were warned.

Love it. Shame the devs decided they were "done" almost immediately after they dropped the campaign because I would have liked a couple more maps/challenges.
The campaign is kind of weak and I definitely had more fun just trying to learn/beat all the different maps on higher difficulties (during early access) and doing the weekly/daily challenges.
The achievements are also pretty badly balanced. Some are hyper easy and some are never going to happen. I have over 500 hours played with just over 2m zombie kills and you need 100m for the achievement... yeah nah

Is this game good?
Yes
Is this game made for masochists who dont know what the word "fun" means?
Yes
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They are Billions is when you take the idea of tower defense, flip it on its head, add colony management to it and then throw a horde mechanic towards the player and yell "Have fun with that one, A**hole!".
You min max or you die. You kite or you die. You build the RIGHT colony or you die. You build efficient or you die. You skill proper or you die.
I think the one thing the game really has going for it that if you end up failing it doesnt spell disaster. Your save file doesnt get erased. You dont lose any progress other than on the level you played on. You can even reset the entire research tree at no cost whatsoever so you can experiment with what you may be wrong about. That is until you won a game with it. Then you can get screwed on that lol
Now would I say that the game is worth 30 bucks? Well it is 6 years old. And the gameplay isnt the most entertaining. Its more a case of "Lock in and enjoy". So if you are that kinda person? Yea it is. If not, wait for a sale.

1542 Hours of gameplay. Still playing everyday. Enough said. Would love a follow up game one day.

As someone who thoroughly enjoys RTS games, I can confirm that this game is worth it every time. The controls aren't too bad, the gameplay loop is great and intense, the custom games are fun, the campaign (except hero missions) are enjoyable, and the difficulty range is perfect for all who would give the game a try.

I, as of today, have beaten the campaign completely on 800% difficulty.

I might come back to this game one day after getting the campaign revamp mod or something, but for now, I bid this game farewell! 400 hours of gameplay and all of it has been wonderful!

The first half of every game is a bit crunchier (resource management) than I would like, but the second half is always satisfying. Maybe even more so since your success depends on how well you set up your economy early in the game. It feels really good to see absurdly numerous monsters dashing themselves against my carefully efficient defenses.

One request-- could the wood and stone towers have range circle like units do? I know the description says that putting units in towers extends their range, but it doesn't say by how much, and sometimes that information would be helpful when placing towers.
Sorry, second request-- please make it clear how to delete custom games from my list; the list has become long and cluttered with custom scenarios that I thought looked cool but lost my interest.

Thanks for making a game that I can immerse myself in to distract from IRL problems for a couple of hours.

Great game, very addictive - some of the custom maps are really good and extend the life of the game massively. shame it is not longer supported by the devs.