I was a bit disheartened after playing TAB for the first time. An exceedingly graceful looking new RTS that presented itself as the embodiement of turtling-gameplay.

You define a set number of days and defend your town against the zombie hordes until time expires. Given that I prefer proactive strategy rather than passively hogging at my hermetic walls and towers and hoping for better days to come. Not my cup of tea.

After launching the Steam Workshop I came back to They Are Billions to see what the community was making out of it. The story driven missions are amazingly good. I sat there thinking “why aren’t the developers doing something of the likes?”- With “From the Ashes” you are tasked with retaking an infected city, you must face a final Giant and you can only do it with the units you manage to scavenge on the map. The Emperor Series also knows how to offer different ways to play the game in a very reactive way by having you clearing maps or making a run for safety. TAB is at its best when you are being active instead of being reactive.

How jolly was I when the new development update talked about the campaign. Here’s what is up with it according to They Are Billions developers.  

”
The Campaign

This is the big challenge for this year! We know you have lots of questions about it, let us answer some of the most common ones.

What happens with the Campaign, Why it is so delayed?

First, let me say that we really understand your impatience. The launch of the Campaign has been delayed from our first estimations, so we fully understand you can be a bit disappointed. But, be aware that all this extra time means that we are developing a much more ambitious Campaign than we originally planned. Given the success of TAB, we feel the responsibility to develop the best possible game. We’ve just got one chance to release the full finished game, and we would honestly prefer to be known as the ‘slow developers’ that have released a great RTS, than the ‘rushed developers’ with an average game.

Think that the Campaign is going to be like a new full game with 40-50 hours of content! We have literally created hundreds of new graphics for the Campaign. Indeed, the investment in the Campaign has been much larger than for all the Survival Mode.

When can we test and play the Campaign?

We’ve decided not to partially release the campaign under Early Access, but release it fully at the same time that we officially launch the game out of Early Access. We will perform all the testing internally here with our team of testers and, of course, we will keep on updating you about the campaign details here. We believe is better not to release the campaign “in pieces” as it would delay the development, and it would spoil everything. We want to surprise you with the full Campaign”

Hopefully the devs will take some cues of what the community is doing and what their players are enjoying. I look forward for this, Numantian Games! Meanwhile go check the Steam Workshop.