A steampunk real time strategy with solid gameplay and a metric ton of zombies?? Yes, please.
They are Billions makes no bones about what it is and what it isn’t. What it is is a strong real time strategy title coated with a steampunk overlay that is punishing good fun. You start each “campaign” with a town hall, 4 rangers (basic ranged units) and a soldier (stronger but slower ranged unit) and your goal is to survive for as long as you can. That’s it. No deep story or b-movie esque cut scenes. Just you and the zombie hoards.
And oh are there hoards. Every few days of game time, the zombies come in a large “wave”. At first it’s just a few to tear down some of your defenses and infect one or two of your buildings, but as the days progress the waves just get bigger and bigger until you inevitably die…Your defenses crushed under the weight of the massive zombie hoards. The developer, Numantain Games, has said that the game can handle up to 20,000 units. Cheery, I know.
Just like any good real time strategy, there are resources that you must balance. Food, Wood, stone, iron, and later in the game oil. Also added to the mix are workers and electricity. Each dwelling that you build or upgrade requires food and contains a number of workers that you use to work in other building like sawmills and Tesla towers (I’ll get to those in a minute). If you lack workers, you can’t build that windmill that you need so desperately to power you building and expand your settlement. Each building also has an electricity requirement that must be met.
It just wouldn’t be a good RTS if there wasn’t research involved. Research is handled first with the Wood Workshop. A rather large building that takes a lot of workers and energy to produce but allows research of farms and spike traps and the like.
On to the Tesla Towers. Expansion isn’t as easy as it is in some other RTSs. You must build Tesla Towers to allow your colony to expand into the zombie wastes. Of course, these towers require workers and power to make them run. Lose power or lose a building in the “chain” and suddenly half of your defenses aren’t working because they can’t get power. And seeing as they are one of the weaker buildings in the game, this can happen … a lot.
