Ebbtide vs They Are Billions: Two Different Ways to Lose to a Horde

They Are Billions is the obvious comparison, so let us make it properly instead of gesturing at it. Both games put you in front of an overwhelming zombie horde and punish thin walls. Past that, they are asking different questions.

They Are Billions is a colony-survival game on a fixed map. Ebbtide is a city-scale campaign where you lose districts instead of a single base.

• TAB: build one colony, survive waves, fixed map
• Ebbtide: 15 sliding LA districts plus a world campaign
• Ebbtide adds finite ship magazines and convoy supply lines
• Ebbtide lets you take direct control of a single unit

Doesn't apply when: Ebbtide is unreleased, so every Ebbtide claim here comes from the store page and devlogs — not from play. TAB claims come from its released build.

The honest limitation first

Ebbtide cannot be played yet. We have not played it, and no one outside the developer has. So this is not a review comparison and we are not going to pretend it is.

What we can compare is design intent — what each game says it does — against They Are Billions' actual released behaviour, which anyone can verify for $29.99.

Side by side

Source: They Are Billions figures from Steam appdetails (App ID 644930). Ebbtide figures from Steam appdetails (App ID 4915700) and the store page. checked 2026-10-22.

Difference 1: what "losing" looks like

In They Are Billions, defeat is binary and local. Your colony holds or it does not. You build a wall, the wall fails, the horde floods in, the run ends. The tension is concentrated in a few minutes and the map does not remember.

Ebbtide's store page describes something structurally different: 15 districts sliding from Hold to Crisis to Lost, and an explicit statement that you cannot save everyone. The failure state is distributed. You are not defending a point, you are triaging a city, and the decision the game keeps forcing is who to pull out first.

That single design choice changes what the game is about. TAB asks "can I hold?" Ebbtide asks "what am I willing to give up?" A player who wants the first question answered will find the second one stressful in a way they did not sign up for.

Difference 2: the camera is the mechanic

Ebbtide's headline claim is that the operations map is the battlefield. Scroll into any street and it becomes the live 3D battlefield with no loading screen; scroll back out and "the fight keeps running". The store page is explicit that there are no separate missions and no hidden auto-resolve — every soldier lost and building destroyed carries back to the map.

Tab's zoom takes you closer to the same battle, but the strategic and tactical layers are separate: you plan on top of the colony, then you fight the wave. It is one continuous place in Ebbtide, which is why the game can get away with having no mission list at all.

This is also the claim we are most sceptical of, because it is the hardest to deliver. "The battle keeps running when you zoom out" is a performance promise as much as a design one. Steam lists a modest 10 GB storage requirement and no GPU spec, so there is nothing yet to judge it against.

Unknown· Whether the no-loading zoom holds up with a million zombies on screen cannot be verified until release. ProjectAlive has not published a frame-rate target or GPU requirement.

Difference 3: supply is a front line, not a resource bar

This is where Ebbtide diverges hardest, and where no existing coverage goes into detail.

In They Are Billions, logistics is colony management: build housing, staff it, generate resources, spend them. The horde threatens your walls. It does not meaningfully threaten your economy, because your economy sits inside the walls.

Ebbtide puts the economy outside. Ammunition and fuel can only be replenished at bases you hold. Building materials for every wall must be hauled in by hooklift truck or helicopter sling. And the Nexus — the hive mind — specifically hunts convoys and cuts roads.

The consequence: your supply line is a target that exists on the map, and losing it is a slower defeat than losing a wall. A TAB player has no equivalent experience. They have never had to decide whether a convoy is worth escorting.

Confirmed· Store page: "Soldiers, vehicles and aircraft burn through ammunition and fuel, and they can only rearm and refuel at bases you hold." Also: "The horde hunts your convoys and cuts your roads, so keep the supply lines open."

Difference 4: one unit, hand-flown

Press TAB in Ebbtide and you take direct control of a single soldier, tank or helicopter. That is a genuinely different relationship with the battlefield than TAB's commander-only view, and it is visible in the devlogs — there is a dedicated video of AH-6M Little Bird flight deck takeoffs and another on rotor wash during rappelling.

For some players this is the selling point. For others it is noise, because micro-managing one helicopter in a game about 15 districts is a strange use of attention. Both reactions are reasonable and neither can be settled before release.

Where the sources disagree about Ebbtide

One thing worth flagging: coverage of Ebbtide does not agree on what genre it is, and that disagreement is informative.

These are not contradictions in the sense of one being wrong. They reflect that the game genuinely straddles real-time tactics, base building and a campaign layer, and each source picks the part it cares about. But if you are deciding whether to wishlist, the label matters: someone expecting a TAB-style wave defence will get a city-triage campaign instead.

Pick by what you actually want

So which should you play?

We are not going to rank an unreleased game above or below a released one. That would be exactly the "author's impression dressed as data" problem this site exists to avoid.

What we will say concretely:

1. If you want a solved, known quantity: They Are Billions is $29.99, has 46,343 reviews and six years of community knowledge. You can read exactly what you are buying today.
2. If you want the city-triage idea: Ebbtide is the only thing on the market describing 15 districts sliding into loss while a carrier group tries to hold them. Wishlist it and wait for release footage.
3. If supply-line pressure is what appeals: Ebbtide is the one advertising it. TAB does not have a comparable convoy-hunting loop.
4. If you dislike direct unit control: Ebbtide's TAB key is optional, but the design leans on it in its own marketing, which suggests it matters more than a side feature.

Frequently asked questions

What to read next

• Core mechanics — the supply-line system that separates these two games
• Release status — no date, and the command you can run to confirm it
• The arsenal — every unit and structure Ebbtide has named, with a source for each
• System requirements — including the Apple Silicon-only line on Mac
• Is this the right Ebbtide? — if you landed here by accident