Yesterday I was gifted the game "They are BIllions". It is a Steampunk RTS/building sim game, where you build your own colony in an apocalyptic wasteland surrounded by the undead.

Your mission is to survive for the amount of days you set per game session. The longer the mode of play, the easier it is to survive, but the shorter session you go for, the harder it is to survive, as you not only have to suvive against the undead that close in on your base, but also survive against waves of undead that spawn randomly around the map that head straight towards your colony.

Now I think that this game is practically a Dark Souls type game, simply because you have to manage your economy as well as expanding your base, managing your resources and building armies to protect your base and expanding efforts. You produce tents, which produce colonists that provide you with an income of gold, but they also spawn 2 workers per tent, and workers need to work in production facilities like food farms, lumber mills, stone quarries and oil rigs. Not only do you need workers for those facilities, but you also need one worker per military unit you build, meaning you will naturally have to build more tends and further expand your base, which also risks attracting the undead as you try to expand and secure more land.

I had one such experience just last night as follows:

I was building my base, walling the surrounding open areas with wooden walls and towers to defend with. I sent out one lone soldier to scout an area I was wanting to expand towards. he came across a "doomed city", which was sprawling with undead. He came close to one of the city buildings and shot at it, which made a lot of noise and seemingly attracted the entire city's worth of undead. THey then came down on him like a swath of locusts, killing him instantly and I thought that was it for him.

What I failed to realise, was that not only had I attacked a hornets nest of undead, but I had also created enough noise in the surrounding area that in turn, attracted even more undead hordes to join up. They slowly made their way towards my lightly defended colony and proceeded to infect and demolish it within 2 minutes.

My town centre was then infected and it was game over. The game then deleted my save file and I had to start the game all over again, this time in a totally different area on the map with different resources and different clumps of undead shambling around. 

I've played a total of 13 playthroughs of it so far, each with a different setting, from hardest to easiest, and I've still managed to die one way or the other.

It's still a lot of fun to play with though. I'm loving the concept of a building/RTS sim that deals with the troubles of the undead and expanding, while also trying to manage an army/colony. I'd totally suggest giving the game a shot and their art style is quite nice, while also allowing for a close and far zoom out option via the mousewheel.

If anyone is interested in buying the game, there are a few handy tips for playing it here:

(Current game file size is basically 1gb)

Looks and sounds pretty neat.

I am not sure if I would like the game; if it goes on sale I may pick it up.

Honestly, I'm in love with the idea itself, but after dying a few times over and over, it's taught me to be extremely careful when I think about expanding, as I mentioned in the OP, noise plays a big part in the game itself, which no other RTS has really bothered with before. I only send out archers to scout the lands now, as they are both quick at moving around, and their arrows make no noise, which is great for taking out packs of undead around your base.

I also forgot to mention, the game also contains a live pause system, so when you're trying to build, you can hit the pause button/spacebar to pause the game and plop down buildings. You also gain back 100% of the resoucres put into a building back, if you delete it in paused mode.

Also, the game contains a "repair all" feature for everything you build, but it only works when the horde isn't attacking you base, but at the same time you cannot build any buildings or units while doing so, so you have to plan it out when repairing your colony. 

No problemo  

They seem to come in waves after a few days pass. I got my first wave by day 15, but I wouldn't say it was another 15 days after that, as I didn't get that far in each of my playthroughs, since I either attract a horde, or a wave is too big for me to ward off. You also have to keep the undead away from your colony tends, as they provide you with those colonists you need to generate gold, and workers that are needed to work at production facilities. You lose a tent, you lose out on gold and your production facilities lose workers and you slow down in production as a result. You'll also have to face more zombies when that happens, as each tent that is infected and destroyed, spawns 3 additional zombies, so if your tents are all packed in columns and rows of 2, you're basically setting yourself uop for a quick demise. 

You need generators to power up your buildings, but you need Tesla towers to expand your building radius. If you lose a Tesla tower to the undead, the surrounding buildings that the tower supported with power from the generator, begin to shut down completely. This makes the game quite hard when you have to manage where you put your tents and Tesla towers. I usually confine my colony tents to a secure and walled off area, while the Tesla towers remain behind a wall or two. Sometimes I wall them off entirely to keep them safe.

You also have to keep a close eye on sending out armies to deal with a few hordes lying about. If you spot a small crowd of them, don't be afraid to take them out with Archers, as they are silent and can outrun them, but don't kill a few and run back to base, as you'll only end up leading that crowd and others back to your base.

Whatever you do, do not let a single zombie near one of your tents. One zombie can kill a tent and spawn 3 undead, which can then spawn another 3 from killing another tent, effectively creating a massive horde from within your own base. If your town hall survives being attacked, you can repair the infection meter (the yellow bar) back to full, but only after you stop the undead from attacking anything. 

User review of the game in it's ea state:

can we stop referring to games as the "dark souls of" whatever genre they are

Dark Souls pretty much had people dying over and over again, to a point where it became a meme and the meme was then used on anything else that gave you a really hard time playing it.

thank you for explaining the incredibly simple concept that I am already well aware of. Dark Souls came out in 2011 and while people could take interest in the game's story or world, they only ever think of Dark Souls as "that really hard game". but at this point it just sounds annoying and stupid to call games that. just because a game is hard doesnt mean its comparable to dark souls

As a big RTS fan, I don't like this a bit. Why zombies, they're freaking everywhere and in every genre. How are people not fed up with it yet?

I like the old school building interface though. Plus points for that.

You know you're taking this just a tad far, for a thread title, rather than talking about the topic subject itself right?.

I could have called it "they are BIllions - A really hard fucking game innit", but that didn't roll off the tongue and I'm not here to appeal to those who get easily wound by using a different set of words to describe a game's difficulty.

There really isn't anything more to add to the deal with the ending title, so let's keep this topic back on track.