Bottom Line: An unflinching, brilliantly-executed RTS that weaponizes anxiety. They Are Billions isn't just a game about zombies; it's a masterclass in designing for strategic collapse.
They Are Billions is less a power fantasy and more a disaster simulator. Your primary emotional state while playing isn't empowerment, but a low-grade, persistent anxiety. Every decision is freighted with consequence, and the game’s notorious difficulty is not a bug, but its most defining feature.
The Anatomy of Defeat
The gameplay loop is a tightrope walk over a canyon of failure. You start with a command center and a handful of units. Your first minutes are a frantic scramble to secure resources—wood, stone, iron, and food—while simultaneously pushing back the fog of war. The map is peppered with dormant zombies, and disturbing a group too early can trigger a chain reaction that brings a premature end to your colony.
The true tension comes from the "hordes." At set intervals, a massive wave of infected attacks from a random direction. The game gives you a countdown, but the feeling of dread is palpable. Your early defenses, a few wooden walls and a smattering of archers, feel laughably inadequate against the coming storm. This forces a constant, agonizing calculation: do you expand your economic base, or do you harden your perimeter? Invest in research for better units, or churn out more cheap defenders? Every choice is a trade-off, and a wrong one made an hour ago can be the single point of failure that brings your entire enterprise crashing down. There is no recovery from a major breach. Once the first zombie gets past your walls and infects a residential building, the infection spreads exponentially from within. It’s a brilliant, soul-crushing mechanic.
A Tale of Two Games
The inclusion of "The New Empire" campaign was clearly a response to player demand for a more structured experience, but it’s a curiously uneven affair. The campaign missions attempt to add variety—clearing out all zombies, protecting a specific landmark, or reaching a certain population—but they often feel like constrained versions of the more dynamic survival mode. Some hero-centric missions, where you control a single unit in an assault, feel particularly disconnected from the core base-building appeal.
It is the original survival mode where the game’s vision is most purely realized. Here, on a vast, randomly generated map, the narrative is entirely your own. The slow, methodical expansion, the thrill of discovering a rich vein of iron just in time, the panic of realizing you left a one-tile gap in your northern wall—this is where They Are Billions shines. It’s a purer, more honest expression of the game's core conceit, and for many, it remains the definitive way to play.