Bugs Billions of Bugs Beginner Guide: Towers, Upgrades

TL;DR: Bugs. Billions of Bugs. is a tower defense game where you defend a mining colony using 8 tower types (Gatling, Acid, Plasma, Cryo, Sniper, Mortar, Tesla, Flame) and 7 orbital powers (Orbital, Napalm, Cryo-EMP, Acid Rain, Ion Storm, Gravity Well, Bait). Play solo, through a 26-map campaign, or with up to 4 players in Steam co-op. A 165-upgrade tree persists between runs, and a built-in map editor with Steam Workshop support extends the game past its own campaign.

What is Bugs. Billions of Bugs. actually about? (quick answer)

You're defending a mining colony from swarms of insects using towers built along chokepoints and orbital powers you call in from above. The scale is the point: waves genuinely climb into the thousands of individual bugs, and the game leans into that with escalating tools, from basic Gatling turrets up to napalm strikes and gravity wells that fling enemies around the map. Progress carries between runs through a persistent upgrade tree, so even a lost battle still funds the next attempt.

Key takeaways

• Developer Recoil Mojo, released September 10, 2026, $2.99 base ($1.79 at a 40% launch discount)
• 8 towers confirmed: Gatling, Acid, Plasma, Cryo, Sniper, Mortar, Tesla, Flame
• 7 orbital powers confirmed: Orbital strikes, Napalm, Cryo-EMP, Acid Rain, Ion Storm, Gravity Well, Bait
• 165 persistent upgrades covering towers, orbital powers, and prestige bonuses
• The Bug Index tracks 7 enemy species by armor, behavior, and the towers best suited to killing them
• Solo, 26-map campaign, or up to 4-player Steam co-op, plus a map editor with Steam Workshop support

Step-by-Step: your first defense

1. Build a mixed loadout before the first wave, not after: You start with access to fewer towers than the full roster of 8, so use the early build phase to place a spread rather than stacking one type. Gatling and Acid cover basic sustained damage, while Sniper and Mortar handle armored or distant targets differently.

2. Learn what each orbital power actually does before you need it in an emergency: Gravity Well "whirls and flings" enemies toward your cursor on a cooldown (confirmed directly from the in-game tooltip), and Napalm, Cryo-EMP, and Acid Rain all leave a damage pool that punishes bugs walking through it afterward, confirmed directly in the game's own tutorial text. These aren't interchangeable, matching the right power to the right wave shape matters more than spamming your strongest one, the same lesson our Welcome to Elderfield guide makes about picking the right combat action instead of just attacking every turn.

3. Check the Bug Index before assuming your build covers everything: With 7 enemy species tracked by armor type and behavior, spending a minute reading what flies, what spits, and what just refuses to stop moving tells you which of your 8 towers is the actual counter, rather than guessing from a bug's color alone, the same discipline our roster-verification approach applies to any game with a named enemy or class list worth getting right.

4. Don't treat a loss as wasted progress: The upgrade tree persists across runs, so ore and gems earned in a failed defense still fund the next attempt's upgrades. A rough first few runs are how the 165-entry tree gets built out, not a sign you're doing something wrong, similar to how a failed Dark Rebirth attempt in Orc Incremental still banks permanent progress.

5. Try SURGE mode once the 26-map campaign starts feeling familiar: SURGE generates a new battlefield layout every run, with random nest positions and geometry, so it's the better mode once you've learned the campaign's handcrafted chokepoints and want a defense that can't be memorized.

6. Bring friends in before you need the help: Co-op supports up to 4 players and works across the campaign, custom maps, and Workshop creations alike. Splitting chokepoints between players scales a lot better than one person covering the whole perimeter solo.

Caption: The upgrade and tower-purchase screen, read directly to confirm the full roster of towers and orbital powers cited in this guide.

GODEEPER: Want another swarm-scale defense game to compare loadouts against? Our Risk of Rain 2 items and artifacts guide covers a different genre with a similar escalating-power philosophy.

The 8 towers and 7 powers, what's confirmed

The official description splits your arsenal into two categories. Towers are the persistent, placeable defenses: Gatling turrets, Acid sprayers, Plasma cannons, Cryo towers, Sniper emplacements, Mortars, Tesla towers, and Flame turrets. Powers are active, cooldown-based abilities you call in on top of that: Orbital strikes, Napalm, Cryo-EMP, Acid Rain, Ion Storm, Gravity Wells, and Bait drops. A live gameplay screenshot confirms the hotbar layout matches this exactly, with each power showing a real ore or cooldown cost (Napalm at 70 ore, Acid Rain with a 12-second cooldown, Ion Storm at 75 ore, for example).

Enemy variety scales with your arsenal. The developer names Workers, Armored grunts, Darts, Spitters, Skyrays, Colossi, Queens, and Kings as escalating threat types, with Colossi specifically called out as tanky ("refuse to die") and Kings framed as a run-ending threat ("mean it's over"). The Bug Index is the in-game tool for tracking which of your towers actually counters which of these, a similar function to how our Valheim boss order guide tracks which weapon type beats which boss.

Caption: A mid-campaign defense at Wave 12. The bug counter alone (4,027 remaining) gives a sense of how literally the game takes its own title.

Is Bugs. Billions of Bugs. worth playing right now?

At $1.79 during its launch discount, the price point is low enough that the real question is depth, and the confirmed feature list genuinely delivers on that front: a 26-map handcrafted campaign, an infinite SURGE mode, a 165-entry upgrade tree, full 4-player co-op, and a map editor with Steam Workshop publishing. That's a lot of confirmed structure for a $2.99 base price game from a small developer.

The honest limitation: this guide is written the week of launch, before Steam reviews have had time to accumulate. No Reddit discussion or independent community feedback was found at time of writing either, so treat the mechanics above as confirmed from the developer's own description and screenshots, and treat any claim about overall quality or long-term balance as still unverified until real player feedback builds up.

One detail worth a mention on its own: the store page lists a soundtrack running roughly 60 hours across 986 tracks, an unusually large music library for a $2.99 release. That's not the kind of number worth building a purchase decision around, but it's a real, specific claim from the developer rather than filler copy, and it fits the game's overall pattern of leaning into scale as its whole identity, billions of bugs, hundreds of upgrades, and now hundreds of songs.

Related Reading

• Risk of Rain 2 Items and Artifacts Guide: another game built around escalating power against overwhelming enemy counts.
• Orc Incremental Beginner Guide: a different recent indie launch with a similarly deep upgrade-tree structure.
• Thousand Hells Beginner Guide: another fresh indie release worth tracking from the same launch week.
• Core Crusher Beginner Guide: a roguelite with a comparable persistent-upgrade philosophy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Bugs. Billions of Bugs.? A tower defense game from developer Recoil Mojo, released September 10, 2026. You defend a mining colony from massive insect swarms using 8 tower types and 7 orbital powers, solo or in 2-4 player Steam co-op.

How many towers are in Bugs. Billions of Bugs.? 8, confirmed directly from the official description and in-game hotbar: Gatling, Acid, Plasma, Cryo, Sniper, Mortar, Tesla, and Flame. Each is unlocked separately and specializes through multiple upgrade paths.

What are the orbital powers in Bugs. Billions of Bugs.? Seven confirmed: Orbital strikes, Napalm, Cryo-EMP, Acid Rain, Ion Storm, Gravity Well, and Bait drops. These are active abilities on cooldowns, separate from the passive tower defenses.

Does Bugs. Billions of Bugs. have co-op? Yes. Up to 4 players can defend together in Steam co-op, hosting friends-only or public lobbies, or joining through Quick Match, across the campaign, custom maps, and Workshop creations.

What is SURGE mode in Bugs. Billions of Bugs.? An infinite procedural mode with a newly generated battlefield every run, different from the game's 26-map handcrafted campaign. Random layouts and nest positions mean you can't repeat the same winning defense pattern forever.

Is Bugs. Billions of Bugs. good? It's too new to have Steam review data yet, this guide is written the week of launch. The official description and confirmed mechanics (8 towers, 165 upgrades, a 7-species Bug Index, full co-op and Workshop support) suggest real depth, but an independent quality assessment will need to wait for player reviews to build up.

References

• Bugs. Billions of Bugs. on Steam: official store page, price, and full feature description cited throughout this guide.
• Recoil Mojo: developer's YouTube channel.