A new patch coming to survival real-time strategy game (RTS), They Are Billions, will lower the difficulty and remove some time limits following fan feedback of its newly launched campaign mode.

The complaints have seen the game drop from its overall rank of Very Positive to Mixed, prompting developer Numanitan Games to state: "We have to say that we are saddened to see that many players with hundreds of hours of play in Survival mode have written very negative reviews for the launch of the Campaign."

"The launch week is becoming really intense. We never thought that version 1.0 would generate so much interest, opinions and feedback," the developer said by way of a recent Steam update. "That's a sign that They Are Billions is becoming a very popular game and, as such, generates intense debate.

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UPDATE 4.15PM BST: They Are Billions is coming to PlayStation 4! It's being ported by a company called Blitworks, which ported Spelunky and Fez and other games to PS4, and it's due to arrive in July.

ORIGINAL STORY 3.30PM BST: The long-awaited campaign for marvellous zombie survival RTS They Are Billions will be released 18th June. It's free, assuming you already own the game.

The campaign is titled The New Empire and will spin a fairly schlocky (perfectly in keeping with the rest of the game) story about said New Empire venturing out from behind impenetrable walls to reclaim the world from the infected, which are basically zombies.

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How long can you survive? It's so simple and so effective: build a base and protect it from the enemy zombie hordes. Not the ones milling about on the map, although they do trickle towards your base and sometimes with proper intent, but the actual hordes. When they approach they get a special announcement and a clock ticks down to their arrival, and a big skull represents them marching across the map. So much drama! When they turn up, you'll know why.

Zombies that are harmless in ones or twos are devastating in their hundreds, and if your walls and traps and troops aren't strong enough, and the zombies reach your vulnerable workers, they will infect them and the wave will get stronger. If you don't patch the hole quickly, zombies will sweep through your base like sea through a sandcastle. Dying in They Are Billions is an inevitability, and death comes quick.

But the difficulty is a masterstroke, as is the speed at which The End comes. Keeping you on the back foot compels you to do better, and dying quickly means you don't lose much, attempts are brisk, and you aren't overwhelmed by wiping the board clean and starting again. It also naturally breaks the learning into digestible chunks.

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