Hey everyone!
We're thrilled to announce the release of They Are Billions for Nintendo Switch 2, available now as of January 22nd!
As a major highlight, it's one of the few games on this platform that supports the Joy-Con 2 mouse mode, making the experience just as smooth as on PC. Of course, you can also play with the gamepad, but we highly recommend giving the Joy-Con a try!
Nintendo Switch has always been one of our favorite platforms. Two years ago, we attempted to port They Are Billions to the original Switch but, as you know, it's a very demanding game even for PC. The only way to make it run at an acceptable speed was to drastically reduce the number of units and zombies, leaving only a fifth of the original, which meant redesigning and rebalancing the entire game. But then... it wouldn't be the They Are Billions we love so much.
They Are Billions lives up to its name: swarms of 30,000 units, each one independent, moving with its own AI, listening, interacting with the environment, and responding like a living organism. That's what made They Are Billions famous, and there was no way we were going to compromise that. So, unfortunately, we had to cancel the project after more than a year of work.
However, its successor arrived: the Switch 2, much more powerful and with a control system almost tailor-made for They Are Billions: the Joy-Con 2 mouse mode. TAB could be controlled just as well on the console as on PC. Extraordinary! On top of that, the latest improvements in Microsoft's compilers allowed us to develop the most optimized version of TAB across all platforms. It's pure engineering! And now the game is 100% identical to the PC version.
We've included some performance optimizations in this new version and also fixed some very obscure crashes that could occur in very specific situations. So this should be the most stable and optimized version yet.
We have other changes in the pipeline, but we want to roll them out gradually. The player base is huge – over 2.6 trillion zombies killed, 95 hours of average playtime, and 5,000 community maps on the Workshop! – so we wouldn't want to introduce any bugs when the game is already so stable... something that frankly terrifies us now. :)
Yes, you did this.
What are we up to now? Well, we've also dedicated some time to three new video game prototypes (unrelated to TAB), with very original ideas but still requiring much more development. On another note, we're working on a project set in the They Are Billions universe... but it's not a video game :). We'll tell you more soon. And finally, we're also exploring how to expand both the game and potential sequels or DLCs.
Thank you so much for reading, and you know the drill—if you have a Switch 2, we hope to see you defending colonies very soon! And as always, any feedback is welcome.
See you soon!