They Are Billions

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Very Positive · 85%Very Positive · 85%2019

The verdict

A brutal, tense zombie-swarm RTS/tower-defense hybrid with a superb survival mode, but forced ironman, no saves and a tedious campaign. Skip it if you hate losing hours to one mistake.

Great for

Patient, masochistic RTS/tower-defense fans who love turtling, careful planning and replaying survival mode

Main risk

One missed zombie wipes hours of progress with no save or reload option

What players love

Challenging, rewarding difficulty

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 positive reviews

“Difficult. Very difficult. But once you learn how to construct your base, the pain gives way to satisfaction.”
Steam review · 81.8 h played ↗

“Right amount of challenge. Keeps you on your toes but with systems built in to make it friendly for less-experienced gamers.”
Steam review · 662.5 h played ↗

Huge replayability and addictive

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews

“replay value is absolutely through the roof.”
Steam review · 2574.9 h played ↗

“1542 Hours of gameplay. Still playing everyday.”
Steam review · 1542.6 h played ↗

“A huge plus is the workshop with a huge number of custom maps that are very interesting to play.”
Steam review · translated · 78.3 h played ↗

Tense, satisfying swarm defense

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 positive reviews

“It feels really good to see absurdly numerous monsters dashing themselves against my carefully efficient defenses.”
Steam review · 526.9 h played ↗

“Watching thousands of infected crash against carefully planned defenses is incredibly satisfying, and the steampunk atmosphere fits the game perfectly.”
Steam review · 157.5 h played ↗

“Endless zombie waves, a sense of inevitability, shock at the sheer number of zombies, nonstop shooting, giving up positions one by one... perfect!”
Steam review · translated · 166.6 h played ↗

Survival mode is the highlight

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 positive reviews

“Survival mode in this game is GOATED.”
Steam review · 169.4 h played ↗

“skip the campaign, only play the survival game mode. its amazing and 100% satisfies my RTS itch”
Steam review · 68.7 h played ↗

“Campaign is meh, you can skip it, but the sandbox mode is perfect and very fun”
Steam review · 49.3 h played ↗

Great art style, music and atmosphere

Mentioned in ~1 in 12 positive reviews

“Great visuals and art style, sound track, gameplay, and tech progression.”
Steam review · 179.8 h played ↗

“The style is quite unusual. Games like this aren't made now, so it can be considered unique.”
Steam review · translated · 46.1 h played ↗

Pause and flexible difficulty options

Mentioned in ~1 in 14 positive reviews

“lets you issue commands when paused so dont need quick response times”
Steam review · 68.7 h played ↗

“Excellent difficulty options for new to rts players and veterans of the genre.”
Steam review · 299.7 h played ↗

What players complain about

No save/reload, forced ironman

Mentioned in ~2 in 5 negative reviews

“It is not fun to slowly build up for an hour just to have you base destroyed over a single zombie slipping by.”
Steam review · 31.4 h played ↗

“One mistake and you're rolled back an hour, losing all progress. This isn't hardcore, it's mockery of the player's time.”
Steam review · translated · 24.4 h played ↗

“And there is NO WAY TO LOAD A PREVIOUS SAVE. On any difficulty.”
Steam review · 179.8 h played ↗

One zombie causes cascading infection loss

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews

“If you miss at least 1 zombie and let him attack any of your building, the game is essentially over, your CC will be destroyed in ~30 seconds.”
Steam review · 6.5 h played ↗

“I love having 1 single infected slip by all my units ending my entire hour long runs.”
Steam review · 17.9 h played ↗

Slow, tedious pacing with no speed-up

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 negative reviews

“Each campaign level takes forever and not because of interesting gameplay or challenge.”
Steam review · 9.4 h played ↗

“I genuinely, genuinely do not understand how this company is so dense to the point to not add some sort of time skip/fast forward feature to their game.”
Steam review · 22.2 h played ↗

Boring, mandatory hero missions

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 negative reviews

“But for some reason they decided to include mandatory pixel hunt mini-game levels that have nothing to do with the core gameplay.”
Steam review · 326.6 h played ↗

“I've lost count of wasted hours: hero dies on a mine, hero dies on explosion, attack button not working and hero running into zombies, etc.”
Steam review · 18.1 h played ↗

Save corruption, crashes and abandoned game

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 negative reviews

“Full of bugs and crashes all the time. Also it deletes my saved games making it impossible to ever finish the campaign.”
Steam review · 319.2 h played ↗

“The devs abandoned it and its missing so many core features.”
Steam review · 159.5 h played ↗

Campaign tech tree can softlock you

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 negative reviews

“I got soft-locked on like the 7th mission because I didn't unlock specific things in a very overwhelming and poorly explained skill tree.”
Steam review · 26.4 h played ↗

“softlocking yourself with the research tree and wasting all the time you put into a campaign run feels awful.”
Steam review · 103.8 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Playable

Minimum

OSWindows 7, 8, 10 (32 and 64 bits)

ProcessorINTEL, AMD 2 cores CPU at 2Ghz

Memory4 GB RAM

GraphicsIntel HD3000, Radeon, Nvidia card with shader model 3, 1GB video ram.

Storage4 GB available space

Recommended

OSWindows 7, 8, 10 (64 bits)

ProcessorINTEL. AMD 4 cores CPU at 3Ghz

Memory8 GB RAM

GraphicsRadeon 7950 or above, Nvidia GTX 670 or above. 4GB video ram.

Storage4 GB available space

OSWindows 7, 8, 10 (32 and 64 bits)

ProcessorINTEL, AMD 2 cores CPU at 2Ghz

Memory4 GB RAM

GraphicsIntel HD3000, Radeon, Nvidia card with shader model 3, 1GB video ram.

Storage4 GB available space

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