Bills Must Be Paid Review (PC)

Bills Must Be Paid leans into a universal desire: to take a hammer from the drawer, and to smash googly-eyed piggy banks into smithereens. Oh, it isn’t a game that breaks the bank, nor is it one that does more than what it advertises on its box. If anything, it’s a silly, incremental experience that gives you the one thing that reality isn’t able to provide you on a clockwork basis, and that’s a chance to break into your life savings whenever you feel like it. Personally, I’d love nothing more than to take a mallet to my savings jar, but I’m too afraid that I’d find nothing more than a few pennies and a handful of old buttons. Thankfully, Bills Must Be Paid has a bit more to offer.

As the title openly implies, Bills Must Be Paid is all about, well, paying your bills. Rather than working to settle your debts over a nine-to-five shift, however, the game invites you to mindlessly smash a collection of attribute-riddled piggy banks of all shapes and sizes with a wide range of hammers, and to use your funds to unlock more hammers, more banks, and more stat-boosting upgrades that allow you to build on your wrist strength and stamina. It’s a weird concept I’ll admit, but stick with us whilst we iron out the details.

In a true rogue-like fashion, Bills Must Be Paid gives you a seemingly endless paper trail of bills to pay. The goal, in short, is to pay them back with the funds you have stashed away in your various piggy banks. But, here’s the catch: if you run out of stamina, you cannot smash any more of your banks. To that end, you have a bit of a difficult question to answer: do you prioritize your bills so that you can continue to slog through the penniless yellow brick road, or do you use your cash to upgrade your strength and, more importantly, the tools that can offer you greater payouts and rewards?

If you think Bills Must Be Paid sounds deep, then I can honestly tell you that, as far as incremental games go, it isn’t any more complicated than your average point-and-click affair. In fact, it’s all rather relaxing, given that the whole point of the experience is to vandalize portly porcelain pigs with a hammer and to collect small pockets of cash. And, if you think that sounds awfully satisfying, then I can assure you that it is. Moreover, it’s a lot more affordable than a rage room. That’s another thing that you ought to consider before unscrewing the cap on your own piggy bank.

The idea behind Bills Must Be Paid is simple enough to understand, and truthfully, it is just as easy to play. Typically, you smash your piggy bank, and then you unlock additional deposits, with which you can break into to earn more money, perks, and opportunities to latch onto bracelets and rings, which effectively help you to maintain your momentum. And of course, the more you unlock here, the sturdier your hand gets. You pay your bills, and then upgrade certain aspects of your body, such as your grip strength, stamina, and general fitness level. That, in short, is all that Bills Must Be Paid is. It doesn’t rewrite the book. Rather, it simply gives you the opportunity to tear out its pages.

There’s a certain whack-a-mole element to Bills Must Be Paid—a feature that essentially gives you a chance to swing for the portliest of pigs and reap the greatest of rewards. As each pig has its own stuffing and traits—speedier movement, or a pace that’s slightly more sluggish, for example—you have to spot the heftiest porcelain pigs on the board and smash them with whichever hammer you can afford to use. Again, this is an incredibly simple process, and one that you more than likely would have seen at your local fair. Still, it is a lot of fun. Or at least, it is fun for the first two or three hours or so. After that it becomes a little dull and predictable.

All in all, Bills Must Be Paid is a straightforward idle clicker game that doesn’t divulge much more than the basics. As satisfying as it is to mindlessly smash pigs with a collection of tools and upgradable hammers, there is still a numskull-like experience here that is as equally pointless as it is annoyingly more-ish. With that in mind, I’d say that there’s a bit of a mixed bag here. Chances are, its simplistic design and accessible gameplay mechanics will appeal to a niche audience—a crowd who typically prefer to spend their time with minimalistic suites and comprehensible designs. But, there’s also a chance that it might not appeal to the broader demographic. Given that there isn’t much of a challenge here, the odds of it attracting every eye in the room are pretty low.

With all of the above said, Bills Must Be Paid is quite clearly a guilty pleasure that you both hate to love and love to hate. It might not be the greatest idle clicker game to breach the catalog since Cookie Clicker, but I think we can all agree on one thing: smashing piggy banks is incredibly satisfying. The question is, is it satisfying enough to warrant the purchase?

Verdict

Bills Must Be Paid capitalizes on a universal pleasure—a restless desire that frequently craves a mallet, a porcelain pig, and an opportunity to break the bank. As a game, that might not sound like much of a boon, much less an incentive to slip into the back pocket and spend several hours with. But, if we’re being honest, Bills Must Be Paid isn’t a great game that has all of the usual lavish perks; it’s a guilty pleasure that you can’t help but love. For that reason alone, I’d say that it’s worth the risk. Is it a good game? Not really, no. Is it a game that you’ll likely spend three hours plowing through regardless? Absolutely.