My personal life has been incredibly frustrating for the last three years, and the last 12 months specifically have been like screaming into a void. When I saw Bills Must Be Paid launch, I immediately thought I’d found the gaming equivalent of a stress release room. You see, this title arms you with a giant hammer, and your goal is to smash up as many piggy banks as possible. Sign. Me. Up.
Bills Must Be Paid is an incremental game, which is both a blessing and a curse. Players are armed with a hammer that whacks down every other second, leaving the player to guide where it needs to hit. Piggy banks totter around a table, and upon a hit, they crack and eventually burst. The money inside is auto-collected and goes towards your upgrade skill tree, and unlocking some perks or better hammers. Bills Must Be Paid is more of a roguelike, and therefore more involved than most incrementals or idlers, because as the title states, bills must be paid. Ever-increasing monetary amounts must be reached within a certain number of days (turns). Miss a bill, and aside from an unlockable friend who can save you once per game, it’s game over. These bills can be paid early, and in doing so you’ll get access to more piggy banks on the table, but then the next bill will arrive faster, leaving you with less overall time to pay the debt back.
Over the course of the game, different types of piggy banks are unlocked and levelled up as you smash more of them up. Some run around quickly. Others set pigs on fire. One tries to leave the table and take some of your earnings with it. These piggy banks come with increasing health bars that require you to prestige your stats overall. These come in the form of coins and rings that give damage and multiplier boosts, and other bonuses like shrapnel damage.
If you are desperate to survive a run, you can also take part in a few gambling games to double or nothing your earnings. One of those games involves watching 3 pigs switch places and guessing which one has the bonus in. It’s probably the fastest and longest variant of that type of minigame I’ve played in years. I chose to ignore the gambling minigames and was able to win the entire game following four prestiges and 5 hours of gameplay. By that time, the addictive smashy smashy fun was starting to wear a bit thin, so it was the right time to end it. I did find that the game has natural cliff edges that semi-forced me to prestige, which gave a slight niggle that skill alone isn’t enough to make much of a difference. You’ll always have a 4-5hr journey.
The satisfaction from smashing everything up is really what drives the addictive gameplay loop. The sound effects, the visual shatter, the explosions, the raining coins… it all works like a well-oiled machine. This is whack-a-mole on steroids. If that sounds like fun to you, then this game must be played.
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