Unfinished: They Are Billions 12/22/2017

The trailer for this was great, let's see how it plays...

This seems to hit the spot that I wanted Factorio to hit. Factorio always seemed a little too micro-manager to me, or at least too slow to get to the more automated parts.

@matthewgm: I have played it a bit and it is quite fun, if slow paced and really hard. I will wait for some more patches to come out before playing more as something they changed has turned the mouse controls unresponsive and a bit annoying.

Abby is a zombie sympathizer?

abby was steering vinny in the wrong direction, truly a zombie sympathizer haha

Think I'll wait until this one is out of early access before picking it up. Looks cool though.

The art is neat, and I like the music so far. The writing though...eek. "Rangers can shoot their silent bows without making any noise." Can they more quietly-shoot-their-silent-bows-without-making-any-noise if you upgrade them?

Steampunk is a tired setting, and zombies are a tired video-game enemy, but this game seems like it is perfectly good at doing what it sets out to do.

I've not even finished a game on accessible yet although I'm ready to. I've enjoyed it but worried at the moment the survival mode is just a build order challenge. Which is fine but better RTS players than me might burn through it quickly, and I'm getting close to knowing what I should be doing. I hope they can design some more game modes and a great campaign.

To unlock the next maps you don't need 100% score. I think its about 30% for the first, and about 60% at the most.

I LOVE GOGGLES AND WALLS IS THIS THE GAME FOR ME?

I really like the look of this. Decided to buy it now for something to work on over the holiday. I hope it evolves in a good way and not stagnate like some early access games.

Abby seems a bit too quick to yell "build the wall" for my tastes

@nevergameover: Don't do that. I was talking about it in the context of the game. I think Trump's immigration policies are abhorrent.

@ybbaaabby: Just joshing since you were joking about them being sentient.

Glad they took a look at this. This is right up my alley as someone who has always enjoyed RTS's like C&C and blizzard's -craft series but at the same time never cared to engage in competitive multi-player. The procedurally single-player zerg comp stomp nature of this is awesome.

They didn't show off the "chase" command which is very useful. It tells your units to just go after the nearest zombies and start clearing them out. It serves as a nice way to auto-explore with your starting rangers and also to start thinning out the herd for expansion.

The "Please stop" award of 2017 should go to usage of the words "spice" and spicy."

@dasakamov: You know what they say. Double the silent, half the noise!

Well they're actually not saying that but perhaps the Zombies would do if anyone would at least talk to them?

I don't think the post-zombie hipster crowd (that I'm a part of myself) is quite as large as Alex and possibly the rest of GB assume to be. Zombie [things] still sell well and are a major part of pop culture.

Also, I'm coming back around to them. Zombies were overplayed years ago, I'd be alright with a fresh take on them right about now.

Damn! <3 This looks dope! It's really scratching a pseudo-WarCraft II itch for me; I'm all about base building and survival modes.

Fingers crossed this game turns out good, because I want to play this.

Haha just alt-tabbed from They Are Billions, my undisputed GOTY 2017 (three days after I bought it), to see this QL. Can't wait to watch it.

Build more walls!!!

Wall Builder Simulator 2017: Keep 'Em Out Edition

I saw this in my Steam suggestions, and immediately clicked "Not Interested" as soon as I saw zombies/steampunk together.

This actually looks pretty interesting though.

That's really neat, zombies are pretty boring, but the defence parts are my favourite bits of an RTS. Might be looking to check this one out when it gets out of Early Access.

It's like Creeper World but more rtsy.

Somebody else played Creeper World?!? :O

Hell yeah!

I played it too, good game!

I hate zombie games, but I might actually play this. The zombies seem just a good device for an antagonist. Could have been alien slugs or whatever, but this seems fitting and gives a good mood. I wonder how advanced they are going to make the zombie units?

Been putting several hours in this game and I'm enjoying the base Concepts of this game. The survival mode asked just one thing. Make a town that can last against waves of enemies. Somehow this is one of the few games I can just sit down and zone out lately. I finally got to the point where I can regularly get to the last wave before dying. So far so good.

This is pretty much easy mode. Survival is all about efficiency and trying to make the best build choices moment to moment.

Seems like Alex is okay with Trump getting his wall.

This game looks like my jam. Cant wait to have a PC and dive in. Sort of reminds me of a game I played at PAX and had a ton of fun with this year where you were building up a little city on a radial grid, similar bleak tone and high level of difficulty with a fair amount of management without it getting too micro.

@loktarogar: How very un-spicey of you.

This game is superb.

The boiling pools are actually a late game resource.

Needs a lot of polish still, the writing is horrible and there is some atrocious dialogue from the rangers that screams 15 year old escapist fantasy. The camera is worse than they say in the quicklook, because single lanes of land, obscured by trees and cliffs can lead into your base and you won't know until the zombies are all up in there. The AI needs work. Pathing works by assessing the entire map, instead of just the areas inside the FOW which leads to ridiculous scenarios where your units will run around three quarters of the map to get to the other side of a crowded base. Causing blockages by building is not adequately highlighted, and is a very tricky problem with the system they have created. One late game enemy seems to have been designed to push players in a specific direction in terms of gameplay development, and while many other games of this type have these kinds of units to counter the specific problem of this genre, it is antithetical to what is essentially the entire premise up until that point.

That aside, the way the game scales from wood limited, to stone limited, to space limited with the constant threat from the outside is a brilliant example of how RTS can be done right. The balance is off, but is a few slider adjustments away from being excellent and the overall experience is very good, even at this early stage.

Sixteen Bakalars out of a pineapple.

I really do wish it went for anything but the zombie and steampunk themes. I hope there is or will be mod support so that someone could maybe just replace all the buildings with space habitat domes and the zombies with something like the protomolecule things from The Expanse, and I'd probably enjoy it.

Remember seeing this on Rorie's Extra Life stream, but didn't have time to watch much of it. Is it archived somewhere?

This game definitely needs some polish and tuning (and please god let them redo the dialogue), but the core is great. Once they breach your defenses you're toast.

Aww man, i Just bought Assassins Creed, and now you show me this. I really like the look of this game, the trailer seemed cool, but now i know it plays well enough, I may need to buy this now. Thanks Vinny for doing some of the tutorial work for me!

@notallama:"I'm so tired, last night was amazing" might be the worst, most cringey RTS unit line I have ever heard.

This could become a really neat game. It was funny how Vinny was explaining the patrol command in an RTS :)

Maybe it's because I haven't played a ton of them, but I'm still a fan of zombie games. I specifically like the searching for supplies and survival aspects, not so much the combat.

Thank you giantbomb for once again showing me a great game that was completely off my radar. I'v really been enjoying it the last two days. perfect for the holiday downtime

@lanechanger: I'm hoping the devs don't take this criticism as an attack because they might dig themselves deeper into this horrible tween fantasy to 'fight the SJW's,' or whatever, but how did anyone think that line was good enough to go in? Is it supposed to be funny?

At some point they'll hire a writer and we'll forget about the writing. Hopefully.

Still a brilliant game that I'm playing right now.

Wait until you hear pretty much every single thing the Snipers say. The unit quotes in this game definitely straddle the line between endearingly lame and just lame, and more often than not, it dips into latter.

Ah... I have to say it. This Quick Look was one of the worst I have watched in many years. Boring, unfunny, with Vinny trying his best to look good here, but in the end playing like a child. I had many moments during QL when I just couldn't watch anymore and had to go do something else, it was bad.

I use a lot of snipers actually. I usually jump from archers straight to snipers, skipping the soldiers. I guess I just haven't been paying attention to their lines. I can't imagine them being worse than that ranger one though.

This game plays a lot like of Age of Empires. The difference is that your defenses must be impeccable because if just one zombie sneaks in unnoticed you are toast. My first two games were lost that way. Only on the third one I lost to the horde bombardment.

It is fun. With some polish and UI tweaks it could be really good. I am enjoying messing around with it in this early state already. Wait, is that a zombie or a villager?

Build walls and have the zombies pay for them...

Just jumping in here to say that anyone on the fence about picking up the game should definitely go ahead and buy it. I bought it after watching the video and played 16 hours over the long weekend. It's tough and I'm not especially good at this style of games but I'm still having an absolute blast.

I like what I'm seeing here. I just wonder if this has any logevity, since the only thing changing is the map, the whole thing could get monotonous real fast.

Hopefully they'll include scenarios or a campaign when this goes gold, would probably get it then.

"Never doubt the double wall."

- Ser Navarro of Steampunk Canada