They Are Billions Adds Explosive Barrels, New Languages

If you’ve been on Steam recently, you’ve probably heard of the latest game to hit the best-selling charts: They are Billions, a steampunk survival RTS where you have to build a colony that can survive a seemingly endless tide of undead. It’s been making quite the buzz for PC gamers, but unfortunately it’s still in early access, so while it’s very polished, it’s lacking in some of the depth and nuance that many other similar games often enjoy.

The good news, though, is that updates come frequently. And over the weekend we got Update V0.6, which adds some cool new features to the game.

The biggest addition is community challenges: every week, a new map will be put out and players can compete to see who scores the best playing it. You only have one chance to do each map, so if you screw it up once, then you don’t get to try again. It’s not quite the multiplayer mode people are asking for, but it’s certainly a start.

For balancing, soldiers, snipers, and flamethrower-wielding Lucifer units can now carry explosive barrels, which can be shot to deal large AoE damage to zombies. Not only does this add some much-needed utility to often underutilized units, but it also opens up new strategies for players who have the foresight to chain barrel explosions together.

The new version also adds some smaller stuff: you can give soldiers multiple waypoints now, which will make movement and patrols easier. And they added a bunch of new languages for international players.

It’s nothing that’s going to make or break the game, but hopefully we’ll be seeing more game-affecting updates as they work out the kinks and bugs. Regardless, I know I look forward to giving those community maps a shot… even though I’ve technically never won a single game so far.

It’s hard, guys. Harder than Dark Souls.