David’s Backlog Busting: They Are Billions (PC) Preview

I’ve been in the mood for real-time strategy games since I recently reviewed Lessaria. In contrast to the bog-standard high-fantasy setting within Lessaria, however, the subject of this Backlog Busting entry leans much more heavily into common steampunk tropes. What we’ve got here is They Are Billions, developed and published by Numantian Games. Since I’m operating under standard Backlog Busting rules here, I had to limit my time with They Are Billions to a maximum of two hours before I started working on this article. So, what sort of impression did They Are Billions manage to make during its two-hour audition?

Well, if you’re a seasoned RTS veteran, get ready to laugh at my ineptitude. I went into the first campaign mission in They Are Billions on the easiest difficulty setting, and I couldn’t complete the mission after several attempts. I genuinely cannot tell if They Are Billions is exceedingly difficult, if I’m just embarrassingly bad at video games, or some combination of both. I’m leaning toward both. I guess making a game’s campaign really difficult is a good way to extend its length, as the game industry has known (and thoroughly capitalized upon) since the heyday of the arcade era.

Since I fell flat on my face at the get-go in the campaign of They Are Billions, I decided to try out its survival mode for a little while instead. “Ah, a game mode in which I have to build a thriving colony and use steampunk technology to fight off waves of zombies with no guidance or safety net to speak of,” I thought. “What could possibly go wrong?” Oh, how naive I was, dear reader. I think I failed my first attempt at survival mode within ten minutes, again on the easiest difficulty level.

Okay, so setting the unexpectedly high difficulty curve aside, there are a few other entries on my list of likes and dislikes about They Are Billions. My main complaint after two hours (again, gameplay difficulty notwithstanding) is that I would describe the quality of the voice acting in They Are Billions as inconsistent at best. To phrase that much less diplomatically, I’ve repeatedly gotten the impression that every voice actor in They Are Billions was offered just enough money to accept the job, but not enough to care about doing it well. I take issue with the game’s “announcer” in particular because of this.

I’m referring to him as the “announcer” because I can’t think of a better term. In each line he delivers, he sounds palpably disinterested. The announcer falls just short of putting forth the amount of emotion that Jeremy Clarkson did in that classic “Oh no! Anyway…” Internet meme. That is to say, it sounds to me like every voice actor who worked on They Are Billions wished they were just about anywhere else other than in the studio delivering their lines. If even the voice actors can’t fabricate some enthusiasm, that doesn’t bode well for engaging players with the core gameplay loop.

That, combined with the surprisingly difficult core gameplay and the fact that I’m probably just plain bad at video games, formed the metaphorical brick wall that made me stop playing They Are Billions a fair bit before my two-hour time limit expired. I would probably enjoy They Are Billions quite a bit if I were more well-versed in the RTS genre. Perhaps I should gain more experience by playing other real-time strategy franchises before giving They Are Billions another shot. If you’re better at these kinds of games than I am, however, They Are Billions is definitely still worth checking out.