Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Indie
They Are Billions
Something Giant is coming!
Greetings!
While we are working hard developing the Campaign of They Are Billions we would like to add some more spice to the current Survival Mode:
The Infected Giant
The Infected Giant is a very special enemy with some specific features. The Giant is a mutated infected that has grown without limit for years and years. It is so huge that the earth trembles under its passage.
When does the beast appear in the game?
From the beginning... They start roaming the outer border of the map, nevertheless, the Giants are so huge that you will always know where they are as their position will be marked on the minimap with a small icon. This is a great clue so you know where you shouldn’t expand your colony or move your units, at least not until you have a very powerful army to fight them.
The Giant(s) appear on the maps with the Infected Population set at “Challenging” difficulty or above. So, new players don't worry, you won't need to face this beast during your first playthroughs.
The Tiny Brain of the Giant
Giants are huge and powerful but with a tiny brain. They cannot hear so they are not attracted by nearby activity. Also, they are almost blind, they react slowly to your actions, but be careful, once it detects a target it will chase it with terrifying speed and there are no walls in the world that can stop them!
Their Deadly Attack
The Giant has the most powerful attack in They Are Billions. They have a very long reach and they hit everything in a 120º arc. Nothing can escape their attack, even other infected can be destroyed if they are within the Giants attack range.
I'm scared... What can I do?
Nothing. We recommend you avoid the Giants and don’t annoy them under any circumstance. But you can’t avoid them all game, you should kill them before the final horde comes for your colony, because they will join them as any other infected on the map. Believe us, last thing you want is to fight the final swarm and the Giants at the same time...
Version 0.9: More Features
New Difficulty Mode: Nightmare!
Are you one of the pro-players that think TAB is a piece of cake? Congratulations and welcome to your worst nightmare!
This is a new value for the Infected Population, which increases the huge population of Brutal mode by 30%!!! And it also includes a gift of three Giants on the same map. We think it is almost impossible to beat the game on this mode but it will be great fun to try. If you can beat it in the desert, you will get a score factor of 800%!! Good luck!
Some technical info about this mode: We have optimized TAB even more in the 0.9 version, allowing the engine to move more and more units. That being said, this mode requires a good computer with many cores and a high speed. Using a lower spec computer can cause the game to suffer, dropping frames and running slowly when the big swarm heads towards the colony. However, the game will continue to be playable.
Armor System Refactored
In previous versions of TAB, the Armor value of the units are subtracted from the damage, for example, an attack of 8 against an armor of 3, deals 5 life points of damage.
Now the Armor decreases the damage as a percentage instead of an absolute value. For example, an attack of 8 against a 25% armor deals 6 life points of damage. This means that now, small damage attacks like the weak infected are not as reduced by the armor as before, but the deadlier attacks (Harpies, Chubies, Giants....) are much more reduced. Also, with the new armour values, Soldiers and Titans are much more resistant to damage than the Rangers and Snipers, which is more realistic.
Ranger and Sniper: 5%
Soldier and Titan: 40%
Lucifer and Thanatos: 25%
New Map Features
You can find on the maps new elements to loot, food crates that add food to the Command Center and old batteries that provide extra energy to the colony. Also, we have added some more decorative elements.
Some more Balancing
Traps life increased.
Soldier and Titan damage increased.
Veteran Soldier and Veteran Ranger attack range increased.
[B]New Achievements[/B]
Four new achievements:
Giant Slayer Level 1: When you kill your first Giant.
Giant Slayer Level 2: When you kill your two Giants on the same map.
Giant Slayer Level 3: When you kill your three Giants on the same map.
The Most Wonderful Colony: When you build all the Six Wonders in your colony.
And that's all for the moment, we hope you to enjoy this new update. In the next one we will talk and show more screenshots from the Campaign.
See you soon!
Development Update v.0.8.2
Greetings!
Just a quick update on the game development.
Campaign Development
We are working now in two fronts, the Old Fortresses, where the tactic missions will be played, and the Trains system. In the next update we’ll talk more about them and we’ll publish new screenshots with new content.
Trains on Survival Mode?
As we said before we want to keep on trying to enrich the content of the Survival mode with elements from the campaign. Therefore we are also considering including the Trains in the Survival mode, but just as new environmental element. There will be a railway line that will cross the map and, periodically, there will be trains passing through the map. It will not only be a nice touch for the maps, but also an important strategic element. Obviously you won’t be able build over the railways so you’ll have to defend that parts in a different way (without walls). On the other hand the trains will destroy all those unlucky infected who happen to be on its way. That’ll certainly be something worth watching!
New Version 0.8.2
These are the new features of the 0.8.2 version, which is available now:
[B]New Army Buttons[/B]
Many times in the game, you want to select all the units of the same type, for example, "Select all snipers to defend the North wall....". There is a new button on the right part of the screen for every type of unit you have (Ranger, Sniper...) that also shows the total amount of each of them. Click them and all the units of that type will be selected.
You can combine the mouse clicks with the Shift key to add the units to the current selection.
[B]Press F2 to select all the Army[/B]
You can use the shortcut F2 to select all units available in your army.
[B]Power Plant Changes[/B]
Now the Power Plant uses 10 wood units instead 5 wood and 5 stone. Before, building sawmills in the late stages of the game was something superfluous and by contrast, if you built several power plants you could easily run out of stone which is so necessary as the game progresses. We think that works much better now, as it improves the resources balancing especially in the second half of the game.
[B]Stakes and Blades Traps[/B]
Judging by the screenshots and gameplay videos from players, it seems that the traps are underused. We think they are currently very useful, as they not only harm the infected but also slow them down. Another advantage is that they can be placed on the floor without restrictions and don't block the movement of your army (as the walls do).
Also they would make more sense in real life, where a fortress would have one or two rows of walls with a gate protected by a series of traps. Building lots of walls randomly just to block the infected looks quite weird :)
So for all these reasons we have improved the traps:
- [B]Stakes Trap:[/B] +20% Life. + 25% damage.
- [B]Blades Trap:[/B] +30% Life. + 25% damage.
[B]Pathfinding for Swarms: Improved Performance[/B]
There is a good reason why They Are Billions is clearly one of the games that manages more units in real time, units that are truly independent, every unit has their own AI and behaves always on their own. That's the reason why the infected swarms in They Are Billions looks so natural and organic.
The game engine is ultra optimized in every aspect, especially the path finding, which is one of the most costly operations.
In many other games with big armies, the paths are computed for a full group of units and generally those paths don't change with time as the environment is static and fixed. By contrast, on TAB every unit computes its own paths to reach its targets. This path is recomputed every few seconds to react to the changes of the environment (walls destroyed, structures built...). Thanks to that, the swarms can split in several paths or single units can leave the swarm if they have seen or heard something, as it would happen in real life.
Although the game system is already quite optimized, we have gone further. Previously, all paths were recomputed if anything on the map changed, which could lead to some frame drops when there are big swarms running to the colony. Now, only if something that can affect the current paths is changed the path is recomputed. For example, the infected don't care about walls; they ignore them unless they are blocking their movement in which case they will try to destroy them. So now, if a wall in their path is destroyed or built the path won't be recomputed.
What all of this stuff means to the player? We expect the game to run smoother, specially when big swarms are approaching the colony.
[B]Survival Challenge: Score Factor fixed[/B]
It was an issue when computing the final score of the Survival Challenge. The Score Factor relative to the map type was not incorporated to the equation, so all score factors of the Survival Mode were 100% regardless the map type. Now that bug is fixed so your score will reflect better the real difficulty of the map.
And that's all for now. Thanks for your support and see you soon!
Big Update! The Six Wonders
Greetings!
Here’s the teaser video we’ve prepared to announce The Six Wonders. Hope you like it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcAbtA42ec
The Six Wonders are the biggest and most amazing ones you can build for the colony. But, as mighty as they are, they’re also really expensive to build. Tons of resources are required for both researching and building them. In return, they grant very special features to the colony, and also increase the final score with extra victory points.
You can only build one of each kind in the same map. Building all of them can be challenging or almost impossible, but that's part of the strategy. If you have the resources to build just one, chose carefully which will suit your colony best, given the current map, your resources production...
The Lightning Spire
This portentous structure reaches toward the sky, capturing the energy of lightning for the colony. In addition, it extends the power supply, acting as a huge Tesla Tower.
Energy Supply: +800
Energy Transfer Radius: 30
Victory Points: +1500
The Atlas Transmutator
No one knows how it works, but this extraordinary and smoky metal spawn is capable of transforming common materials into precious oil.
Oil Supply: +40 (by transmutating 20 wood, 20 stone and 10 iron).
Victory Points: +2000
The Victorious
This unbreakable bunker stands as the most amazing symbol of the victory of humanity against the infected. It's a beacon of hope and courage for everyone in the colony.
Colonists Hope: +20% gold generation for the surrounding dwellings.
Unbreakable: Defenses Life 8000, Armor 10.
Victory Points: +2000
The Academy of Immortals
In this glorious academy, the most famous heroes train the army to battle with the skills and courage of experienced veteran soldiers.
All army units and new units trained are veteran.
Victory Points: +1000
The Crystal Palace
This magnificent architectural wonder generates its own climate control environment, where the best crops bloom and thrive, feeding the colony even in the most barren lands.
Food Supply +800 on any terrain.
Victory Points: +1500
The Silent Beholder
It’s the most precise and complex machine ever created. The Beholder is installed on top of the Command Center revealing the entire map. Nothing can escape its prodigious eye.
Reveals all the map and enemies permanently.
Victory Points: +1500
Finally, here goes a screenshot to show you how the Wonders look in the colony:
New Version 0.8
Of course, all the new features we talked about in our last update are now available: Flat mode (F4), World Capture (F10), the new 30 Mayors, Italian language, the new balancing tweaks, and much more.
By the way, as the Flat Mode has proven to be very helpful, we’ve improved how it’s activated. In addition to using the F4 key, you can use any extra button you have on your mouse, other than the left and right ones, to activate this. For example, you can use the central button that is usually available by pressing the wheel.
What's Next?
Now, we want to put most of our workforce into developing the campaign and finishing the game. In the meantime, some of the new campaign content may be added to the Survival Mode, such as new map themes, new infected... and new features.
As many players have requested, we’ll improve the frequency of our updates to two or three weeks at most. We’ll share more about how the development is going, and tell you, the players, more about They Are Billions.
We hope you like this new update! Looking forward to watching those mega screenshots of your colonies with your amazing wonders.
See you soon!
Development Progress
Greetings!
As you know we are working on a big update for They Are Billions (V.0.8) with The Six Wonders, that we expect to publish on the 5th of May. Yes, it has been delayed, sorry about that! The main reason is that we have to translate all the new stuff into 12 languages which pushed back the release dates and also requires extra testing time.
Meanwhile we have used this time to add more features suggested by you, the players, to improve many aspects of the game. Apart from the Six Wonders, which we will go more in detail in our next post, we want to talk about the new features of the upcoming 0.8 version.
New Language Available: Italian
Finally, we have finished the translation to Italian and it will be included in the next version 0.8. They Are Billions is now available in twelve languages!
Flat Mode (F4)
This is really helpful! You can toggle the Flat Mode with the F4 key. When activated, mountains and forests will be displayed just as flat coloured cells, allowing you to see what’s behind them, making it easier to build near those hidden parts of the map.
More Building Assistance
The cells that are in the map limit, where building is not allowed, will be displayed without energy so that it is much easier to know where the limit is and plan your defences accordingly.
Also, when building, all existing objects will turn semi-transparent as the mouse moves over them, to improve the visibility behind them.
Chasing Command for Groups of Units
You will really love this feature! Now, all units in the same selection slot will automatically go in a group formation when they are in the chase command mode. Just select a group of units, save them in a slot with right click and then activate the command chase.
The Inn 2.0
The Inn has been improved in several ways. It’s influence radius is now bigger, and It’s building margin reduced by one.
Mercenaries come to the Inn every five days, except the first ones which will come after just one day. Also, the number of days remaining for new mercenaries to arrive and the percentage of prestige of the Inn is now shown in the features panel. The more prestige, the more powerful the group of mercenaries will be.
30 New Mayors!
We have added 30 new mayors to add more variety to your colonies. Also, if Mayors that bring resources to the colony (for example 200 wood) provide an excess that cannot be stored in the warehouses, they will be placed as bonus items next to the Command Centre, so you can use them when needed. This can be very useful when building the ultra-high expensive Wonders.
Lots of Balancing Improvements
We have made lots of balancing tweaks, so many that we cannot cite them all here. We have improved the Soldiers (that were not so useful compared to other units). Soldiers now level up faster, they do a bit more damage, they regenerate full life in just 24 seconds, their Armour is better and gives 50% more resistance to fire and venom.
Also, Lucifers do more damage, have more health and regenerate full life in just 12 seconds, and they have 75% resistance to venom.
Titans attack radius has been increased by 20% and deal more damage, also they have more life and Armour, but they are more expensive.
Many of the structures have also been tweaked, so now the game feels much more balanced. Also, the map generation is better now and the map scenario types have also been improved.
Now, more than ever, you will have a wider range of strategic options to fight the infected and develop a successful colony.
Units Health Regeneration
We have improved this mechanic to make it more relevant in game. First we have added a tooltip for the Life text in the selection panel which will tell you about the life regeneration rate of the unit. Units start to regenerate health after two seconds without having received any damage. It will then regenerate a fixed number of life points every second:
Ranger: 1 point / second. Full life in 60 seconds.
Soldier: 5 point / second. Full life in 24 seconds.
Sniper: 1 point / second. Full life in 150 seconds.
Lucifer: 40 point / second. Full life in 12 seconds.
Thanatos: 3 point / second. Full life in 83 seconds.
Titan: 8 point / second. Full life in 100 seconds.
Press F10 to take a Mega Screenshot of your entire colony!
This is just amazing! Have you ever wanted to show off your colony to your friends? Does your colony look amazing with your Six Wonders? Have you won the game without using walls or with any other crazy condition and you want to show it to the world? Now you can! :)
Just press F10 whenever you like and the game will render an ultra-big image of the full map. This is especially amazing when the final horde comes to the colony as all the map is revealed.
You can configure the resolution of the image in the options screen, the highest value being 256 mega pixels!! Just check this.
We hope you like the new changes for gameplay and the Survival Mode. Of course, we keep on working on the campaign secretly behind the scenes. After this big update on the 5th of May, we will share with you more details about the highly anticipated campaign.
Thank you all for your incredible support! See you soon!
New Soundtrack and New Special Building Available!
Greetings!
It has been an old dream of ours here at Numantian to have the opportunity to record the soundtrack of TAB with a philharmonic orchestra. Our composer, Nicolas Diteriks, did a tremendous job collaborating with Johannes Vogel, who conducts the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra. His orchestra has a great deal of experience recording music for videogames (Castlevania, Batman Arkham Origins, Assasin’s Creed III, Lords of the Fallen). It was an amazing experience and we’re thrilled with the final result. We hope the final results will make the playing experience of They Are Billions even more intense and engaging.
For a sneak peak of the recording session follow this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qht8FHOqr7I
New Special Building: The Inn
Build an Inn for your colony to attract workers and mercenaries from the surroundings. Inns are very big and expensive buildings, but they have certain special features that can significantly help you in developing a successful colony. You’re only able to construct one Inn per colony, and you have to research it first in the Wood Workshop.
These are the goodies!
[B]Happier Colonists
The colonists surrounding the Inn will get increasingly happier as they visiting the first-floor tavern causing them to spend more money there that will fill the colony reserves.
Workers for the Colony You can expect lots of travelers visiting your colony to enjoy the Inn’s hospitality. Be sure you have enough food for your guests and also keep the fireplace stoked with enough wood to keep the rooms warm and cozy.
Mercenaries There are a lot of lonely heroes roaming these dangerous and desolated lands. They aren’t ones to linger, but they love to stop for a rest and to enjoy a good beer. They can be hired by a fair price. Build as many colonist houses near the Inn as you can to keep a steady stream of animated colonists and to attract more and better mercenaries.
More news about the development: The Incoming Wonders
They’re taking more time than expected, but they are looking terrific! They’ll be the biggest and most awesome buildings we have created. We expect to have them finished for the next update, but for now, let’s give you the names of the Six Wonders:
- The Beholder
- The Lightning Spire
- The Transmutator
- The Victorious
- The Academy of Immortals
- The Crystal Palace
More news: 150+ new mayors on the works!
It’s true, we haven’t gone mad, more than new 150 mayors are coming!!
As some you surely remember we launched a supporting campaign (http://www.numantiangames.com/support-they-are-billions/) for They Are Billions some time before the official release. We offered special rewards for the fans who wanted to back the game. We’re happy to announce the three highest rewards: the Lucifer, Thanatos and Titan ones, included the creation of a custom mayor inspired in those backers who purchased it.
It’s a massive job! We have to contact the backers, draw a portrait and design their mayor, which requires a lot of feedback, changes, balancing, testing and translating all the slogans into eleven languages. So it is taking some time. We plan to release the mayors in stages, adding a pack of them with every new version.
We’ve already created 30, and they’re all looking awesome. They’re going to add a lot of variety to the game. For example, there’s a new one that pays you a gold coin for every zombie killed :)
New Version 0.7: Changes Log
- New Special Building: The Inn
- New Game Option: Show all alerts. It display all the alert events even when the action is happening inside the camera view are.
- All music themes scored by the Bratislava Philharmonic Orchestra.
- Buildings whose production is paused now displays an icon on the map.
- Some balancing tweaks: Foundry and Engineering Center now costs 3000 gold.
And that's all for the moment...
We expect that we’ll publish the Six Wonders in the next update, but perhaps we will release a prior update with some of the new mayors. . . stay tuned!
Development Update: The Incoming Wonders
Greetings!
This is a quick update to talk a bit more about the development and incoming features for They Are Billions. It has been a long time since our last update because we have been working in parallel on different parts of the game, not only for the Campaign but also for the Survival Mode.
The Six Wonders
Six new buildings are coming... and they are the greatest ones! They are extremely expensive to research and build. Not many colonies will have the capacity to even build just one of them. After all, we are surviving in a zombie apocalypse so there is no place for such luxurious and opulent wonders... BUT, if your colony has plenty of resources or you want to take the risk to build one of them, they can grant you very special rewards. Your colony will be the envy of all. :)
One of them, the cheapest one, will be the Inn/Tavern we mentioned in old updates. Finally we had to change its function as it was conflicting with other elements of the Campaign.
In the next update, we will show you all the Wonders and explain the special rewards. A quick look ahead on the Six Wonders, all of them will give you extra victory points if you win the game. The extra points will be very useful for the veteran players that try to get the highest score possible for the Survival or Community Challenge.
The Soundtrack Scored by the Bratislava Philharmonic Orchestra
Our composer, Nicolas Diteriks, is about to record the soundtrack of They Are Billions with the 60 musicians of the Bratislava Philharmonic Orchestra. This is going to be epic! In the next update, we will show you some videos. Stay tuned!
How is the final score computed?
Many people have asked us how the final game score is computed. This method could change in the future, especially with the new Wonders coming.
Right now, we use this formula:
- If the game is won the score is:
Score = 10,000 + Max(0, 5000 - 10 * Colonist Infected) + Max(0, 5000
-10 * Soldiers Died)
- If the game is lost then:
Score = 1.000 * (Number of Days Survived / Total Days to Win)
- Extra points for colonists:
Score += Max. Colony Population / 2
- Extra points for infected killed:
Score += Max. Infected Killed / 10
And then the final score is multiplied by the score factor.
For the Community Challenge, the score factor can be 100%, 115%, 135% or 155% depending on the map type.
The Campaign Development
There is much to do in the Campaign. We know the expectations are very high, so we want to create something really special. We are producing lots of new assets and implementing many more features.
As many of you already know, in the Campaign you will have to reconquest a huge territory from the infected under the orders of the New Empire. We want the campaign to be non-linear, so the player can decide if he or she prefers to explore an old human base in search of new technology or attack a huge swarm of 200K infected that is blocking a new territory to build a colony with their imperial army... Together with how the player progresses in the science and engineering tree, relation with the new empire, map reconquest strategy, and selection of objectives will make each campaign unique.
We want to add a lot of optional content so players that are stuck and cannot progress will more have more options to expand their army and advance in the technology trees.
Although this decision could change later, we would like to continue with the Ironman Mode for the missions, in the sense that you cannot reload old saves while playing a mission. Of course, if you lose you can repeat it again. Also, you can save freely when you are in the intermissions Campaign Dashboard.
And that's all for the moment, see you in the next update!
New Languages and The Community Challenge!
Greetings Survivors!
We have a lot of news to share about our most recent big update V0.6!
Nine New Languages Available!!
Now the game can be played in Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, Japanese, Russian, German, French, Polish, and Brazilian Portuguese.
The game should start selecting the language automatically. If it does not work please select the language from the Options screen.
Of course, consider the new translation in a beta state as is the game. We will check and improve everything with time. Also, you can use this forum to give us feedback or reporting issues. Each language has its own forum discussion. Our translators will check the forums and update everything as soon as possible.
Are you the best survivor? Try the Community Challenge!
Finally, it is here! Every week, starting on Monday there will be a new Community Challenge where you can play the same survival map and compete with the entire They Are Billions community. The scores will be uploaded to a leaderboard where you can compare your score with other players or friends. You have just one opportunity to try every challenge, so be careful!
Some More Features for V.0.6
Waypoints for Patrol, Travel and Attack Commands
Now you can add more waypoints to a unit’s path when using the commands Patrol, Travel, and Attack. To do so, just keep the SHIFT key pressed when selecting the target of the command. It also works for the Move command. This can be done with the right button, just keep the SHIFT key pressed to add more points.
The Old Towers
Now in the survival maps, you can find some old fortified towers that were infected and abandoned some time ago. You can reclaim these structures and have them join your colony. They can be reactivated once they are repaired.
Explosive Barrels
A new bonus you can find in some of the ruins. Explosive barrels can be carried by Soldiers, Snipers, and Lucifers and placed anywhere you’d like. If a unit shoots the barrel, it will explode causing devastating damage to the surroundings. Be careful, because they will detonate more barrels within range. They can be very useful to lessen a big swarm, or even blow up a full Doom Village!
New Dwelling Models
We have created more models for the wood and stone houses. They share the same style as the older ones but add a bit more variety and beauty to the colony.
New Swarm Music Theme
Our great composer has created a new atmospheric theme for the swarms. Hope you like it. Also, very soon we will record the entire soundtrack with the symphonic orchestra of Bratislava!
Some more minor changes:
- Improvement: Commands activated with the keyboard are more responsive (they are activated on key down, instead of on the key up event).
- Improvement: When Steam Overlay is activated the game pauses automatically and when it is closed the game continues from its last state (paused/playing).
- Improvement: When sending a unit to attack a position, now the travel indicator is displayed in the color red.
- Improvement: When attacking a specific unit with the attack command, a small red indicator will be displayed under the target unit.
- Fixed: When using the command attack key repeatedly the units cancel their current action even when attacking the same target area.
- Fixed: Steam Overlay activation could leave some phantom keys pressed.
- Fixed: Technology names in mayor description.
- Fixed: Graphics glitch with patrol path line.
[H1]F.A.Q Available in the forum
We have published here a Frequent Asked Questions post that should answer the main questions about the game. We will update the F.A.Q periodically with more information.
And that's all for now. In the next big update, we expect to add some more features like the Lost Tavern, the Monuments and Wonders and the Great Telescope (the first new addon for the Command Center). Stay tuned!
See you soon!
Multi-language Support: Spanish Available
Greetings!
First, thanks for all this wonderful support! The amount of comments, feedback, videos, twitchs... is simply amazing! There are players that are making colonies that we have never seen in our play testing. Just look this one with almost 16K colonists!
We are glad to see our game engine moving softly these huge scenes with thousands of colonists, hundred of buildings and dozens of thousands of zombies.
And here goes a quick update to inform you of the game’s development progress.
Since the release on December 12th, we have been very busy working on several important technical aspects of the game:
Solving Installation Issues
With so many players and computers, sometimes some components required by the game are not correctly installed. Therefore, some players have had problems starting the game.
DirectX: It seems the Microsoft install is not always the correctly installed version, so we have added the exact libraries to the game folder and DirectX is no longer needed.
Visual C++ Runtime 2017: The same issue here. This has been the source of a lot of problems, giving the error HRESULT: 0x8007000B (thanks, Microsoft). Now the libraries are compiled statically, so that installer is no longer needed anymore.
There are a few more technical issues that we are studying such as problems with some monitor refresh rates.
Solving Bugs and Crashes
We have fixed a lot of small bugs detected by the players and refactored some parts of the code to avoid random crashes. This new version should be the most stable one.
Multi-language Support
As They Are Billions is being played massively in all parts of the world, we have worked on implementing the multi-language support. And furthermore, we have implemented an automatic system that allows the translators to update the game with their changes very easily. So, all the languages will always be up to date and won't delay the development at all.
For notifying issues or errors in the translations please use this forum. We will create a pinned topic for every language and the translators will take of them:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/644930/discussions/3/
Spanish Available
Spanish is the first language added and is now available on the options screen. It is available in the Version 0.5.
New Languages Coming
We expect in two or three weeks to have the next languages: Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Japanese, German, French, and Russian. We are also trying to add Brazilian Portuguese, Polish and Italian.
New Content Delayed
Unfortunately, because of all the work related to the technical aspects we have delayed the development a few weeks for the new building The Tavern and the feature Challenge of the Week. But don't worry, it will be ready very soon. All the developers want to test our skills against all the players playing the same map. That is going to be very fun!
Thanks for all the support! I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday break and a happy start to 2018.
See you soon!
Survival Mode Available Now!
Greetings! Finally, They Are Billions Survival Mode is available on Steam! We know lots of people have been waiting patiently to play the game, especially the backers after we ran out beta keys. We have worked as if we were being chased by billions of zombies to launch the game much earlier than originally anticipated.
This version is now much more polished than the original. We have implemented lots of improvements suggested by the beta testers and also fixed billions of issues and bugs. This process will continue during the Early Access phase while we work on the epic Campaign Mode.
For the Backers of They Are Billions
The backing period and special editions are no longer available. Thank you so much for your support and patience. The overwhelming support for our game was so much more than we had ever dreamed of.
Your Steam key(s) are already available on your download page in Humble Store. Just use the link from the email you received as: "Your Ranger Edition is Ready.”
In January, we will start creating the special rewards for the Sniper, Lucifer, Thanatos, and Titan editions. We will contact all of you directly by email.
Last Version: V.0.4
From now on, we will announce the new versions and what's next directly on the Steam Store updates section. As many of you may already know, these were the last changes to the game:
New Mayors System Now the colony can choose a new Mayor when the colony reaches specific population levels. There are about 100 mayors with different levels and features.
Thanatos The awesome Thanatos unit is now available. He can be very narcissistic, but his rocket launcher can blow up dozens of infected in one shot!
Veteran Units Rangers, Soldiers, and Snipers earn experience and can level up, improving their attack power and speed.
Targets Selection Priority For the units, you can set the mode for auto-targeting enemies. Currently, it is only "The Nearest Enemy". There will be another mode, where you can set the priority "High Level Enemies first".
What's next for V0.5?
New Building: The Tavern of Lost Souls Would you like to attract mercenaries and strange travelers of all kinds to your colony? Nothing better than offering a beer by the fireplace.
Competitive Mode: Challenge of the Week Every week you can play a specific map that will be the same for all players. All players will compete on the same map and their score will be registered on a Leaderboard. Players will only have one chance to play the Challenge of the Week.
New Languages Coming Soon!
We have decided to anticipate the translation of They Are Billions, so the Survival Mode can be enjoyed by all the players:
- Simplified Chinese: 汉语
- German: Deutsch
- French: Français
- Spanish: Español
- Russian: Pусский
- Polish: Polski
- Italian: Italiano
- Japanese: 日本
- Korean: 한국어
The Campaign
Don't forget that the main mode of They Are Billions is the Campaign. Though the Survival Mode launch has taken us a lot of time, the development of the campaign is a bit delayed but don't worry, it is going to be like a whole new game with a great story, characters, missions, and lots of new features like the steam trains, the old fortresses, the infected mutant... We expect that it will have about 40-50 hours of gameplay. And of course, it will be included for free for all the Backers and Early Access buyers.
We will talk about the campaign in the next updates!
Thanks for your Review
As you know, reviews on Steam are more important than ever. If you are enjoying the Survival Mode, please consider writing a review. The game is just in an early access phase, so we need all of your support to continue developing and improving the game. Thank you very much in advance for your time!
See you soon!
Early Access launch on 12 of December
Greetings!
We would like to announce that the Early Access launch is coming soon. But first, let's talk about the beta program and the supporting campaign.
The Beta Program Exploded! What happened?
For those that have not followed the game updates, here is a small summary.
We first announced the game in July 2017. Since then, we published updates periodically revealing more info about the game. Over time, interest and popularity grew for They Are Billions. Initially, we announced Early Access would be released in Fall 2017 with only the Survival mode. Then in Spring 2018, we'd release the campaign. But after we thought about it for awhile, we thought perhaps that the Survival mode would not be enough content to justify the Early Access launch. Therefore, we decided to delay the launch and only release it when both modes were ready in 2018.
Over time, the hype grew and we received a lot of emails from people that wanted to pre-order to back the game because they loved the art, gameplay, theme... So we thought it would be a nice idea to launch a crowdfunding campaign as we did with Lords of Xulima, which worked very well.
In Update #5, we asked the players for feedback on what we should do because we weren't sure if we should run a Kickstarter campaign or just create a place to support us directly from our website at Numantian Games. We all agreed that the second option was the best, so we worked on setting up a page for players to back us directly. Additionally, we thought that it would be a great idea to let the backers play the Survival mode as beta testers to give us feedback to improve and polish the game. This is exactly what we did for Lords of Xulima. Everything sounded perfect :)
So we did it all on Halloween. We asked for a pack of beta keys from Steam and launched the supporting web. In the beginning, we temporarily restricted the Ranger Edition to avoid having too many players for the very first version of the game because of all the possible bugs. However, many fans voiced their opinion that they felt betrayed for having the Ranger edition locked. It was then that we enabled the Ranger Edition.
This is when everything really began to snowball. People started to play it, upload videos on Youtube, and spread the word. Some big Youtubers even joined the party, building even more hype and expectations for They Are Billions. In less than two weeks, the Ranger keys sold out. A few days later...the Soldier Edition, two days after that...the Sniper Edition... What?????
And during all this debacle, we, the developers were working day and night fixing all the problems and solving lots of issues with hardware compatibility. As we created a custom engine for They Are Billions, it had only been tested on a few dozen different PCs. Now we suddenly had 10K players testing it at the same time! And during the development, we also had to attend to thousands of forum posts with bugs, feedback, and thousands of emails with crash reports that the game sends automatically. We also received hundreds of emails every day of people complaining because they wanted to play the game but didn’t receive a key, or that they did not know that it was a pre-order, or that we were the most greedy company in the world for selling a game for $250 (the Lucifer Edition)... !!!
We would have loved to have the ability to save the game before the launch of the pre-order web so we could return to that point and do things differently, but the real life, as in They Are Billions, works in Ironman mode.
The Good News
First, a big thank you for all that have backed They Are Billions. We are very, very happy and appreciative. That extra income will be so helpful for creating a great campaign that They Are Billions and its players deserve. THANK YOU!!
Second, the game reception has been extremely positive from the beta players, Youtubers, and all the non-buyers that write to us just to say that they love the game and want to play it now. And this is just the Survival Mode! Wait until you see the campaign, which is the main mode that conceived They Are Billions!
Third, during these last three weeks, we have been able to polish a lot the game, solving many issues, bugs, and exploits. We now feel that it is in very good shape. But of course, we will continue the process of fixing and polishing. So, in order to allow everybody to play the game, especially the ones that have pre-ordered it, we will try to release the game on Steam Early Access as soon as possible. We expect to release it in a few weeks. We will add some additional features to the Survival Mode (as you can see in the What's Next post on the forum). Also, we will add Achievements and Steam cards. A basic tutorial for new players will also be implemented.
Initially, the game will have only the Survival Mode during the Early Access phase. We will continue to expand and improve this mode while we work on the campaign. We expect the campaign to be ready Spring 2018.
