They Are Billions

A genuinely excellent core survival loop

They Are Billions' central hook is direct and, by wide consensus, genuinely well executed: build and defend a growing colony against zombie swarms that escalate in size and aggression the longer a match runs. Reviewers across the review base, including many who go on to raise serious complaints about other parts of the package, consistently credit this core loop as excellent. "The semi-RTS mechanics are a breath of fresh air for the genre, the gameplay is fun, and the challenge of the game is generally balanced," reads a 2021 review, one that goes on to explain a specific, separate reason it still can't recommend the full product. A 2021 review frames the standalone strength of survival mode directly: "Survival Mode and zombie mechanics excellent." That distinction — a genuinely strong core system paired with a much more contested campaign built on top of it — is the central tension running through nearly this entire review base.

An extraordinarily consistent complaint about mandatory permadeath

What dominates the critical portion of this review base isn't disagreement about difficulty in the abstract — it's a specific, precisely repeated complaint about the campaign's save structure. "You can't save and load manually. Even 2h Missions are meant to be play[ed straight through, with a single mistake near the end forcing a complete restart]," reads a 2022 review. A 2020 review makes the human cost of that design explicit: "No save game in the campaign halts all momentum. A weak spot in your wall appears 40 minutes in a level? Game over." A 2021 review states the core objection most plainly: "There is really no reason to not have a save function for those who want it as it is a singleplayer game. I have wasted too many hours playing the same loop in the same mission." Checking a broad sample of negative reviews, this exact complaint — not simply "it's too hard," but specifically the combination of long mission length, permadeath, and no player-facing option to disable it — appears with a level of consistency this review rarely finds even among its most well-corroborated findings. Several reviewers explicitly note they'd be satisfied if Ironman mode were offered as a choice rather than mandatory, framing this as a solvable design decision rather than an inherent flaw in permadeath as a concept.

A development history this review found has gone quiet

This review checked Numantian Games' own news feed directly to understand why this complaint has persisted for years without apparent resolution. The most recent substantial gameplay update referenced is "New Version 1.0.8: Improvements and New Features," dated June 2019 — the same month as the game's full 1.0 release. Everything in the news feed since then covers console ports, "best of" list mentions, and a January 2026 Nintendo Switch 2 release, but no comparable campaign content or design update. That directly corroborates a specific complaint several reviewers raise: "This game has had basically no support since it released, so many problems with the campaign making it a massive waste of time," reads a 2026 review. Whatever commercial success the game found through console ports and continued sales, this review found no evidence the specific, years-long, widely repeated campaign complaint has been substantively addressed at the design level.

A related, more specific allegation appears in one early review worth noting for completeness: "Forum Moderators are censoring criticism," reads a 2019 review posted shortly after full release, describing critical posts being removed from the game's official community spaces. This review could not independently verify that specific claim and reports it only as a single, dated data point rather than a pattern corroborated elsewhere in this review sample, in contrast to the campaign save-system complaint, which recurs independently across hundreds of reviews spanning multiple years.

A related complaint about mission variety and pacing

Separate from the save-system issue, several reviewers single out specific mission types as a mismatched departure from the core RTS strength. "The hero missions are straight out boring — you are just kiting till your brain melts," reads a 2021 review, referring to single-character stealth sections interspersed with the main colony-defense gameplay. A 2026 review adds a related pacing complaint: "The most glaring issue is the complete absence of meaningful speed control options. This game forces you to endure every second at a plodding pace." Combined with the lack of manual saving, this creates a specific, compounding frustration several reviewers describe directly: long, slow missions that can't be sped up, that also can't be safely paused and resumed, and that can still be lost entirely to a single late mistake.

Weighing the design philosophy fairly

It's worth acknowledging the case for Numantian Games' approach on its own terms. Permadeath and enforced tension are legitimate, deliberate design tools, and a meaningful number of reviewers describe genuine satisfaction from the stakes that structure creates specifically in survival mode, where match lengths are shorter and the tension feels proportionate. The complaint from critical reviewers isn't a rejection of high-stakes design in principle — it's specifically that applying the same uncompromising structure to campaign missions running two to three hours, with no player-facing option to adjust it, extends a tension mechanic well past the length most reviewers feel it can sustain.

Final verdict

They Are Billions contains a genuinely excellent survival and skirmish mode that earns its strong overall rating on its own merits, and this review recommends that mode without reservation. What keeps the score moderate is an extraordinarily consistent, well-corroborated complaint about the campaign's mandatory, hours-long permadeath missions, compounded by a development history this review confirmed shows no substantial campaign update since shortly after the game's 2019 launch. Buy this primarily for the survival mode; approach the campaign with real caution, and expect its specific, long-standing frustrations to remain exactly as reviewers have described them for years.