Quick Answer: Bills Must Be Paid is a loop of stamina-limited smashing runs: every hammer swing costs stamina, the run ends when it's empty, and everything you smash out of the piggies — coins, gems, rare coins — funds three things: bills (pay on time or the notice warns "20%-50% will be deducted from earnings"), the skill tree (grip / caffeine / gym / wrist / luck branches plus unlockable abilities), and the shop (hammers and collectibles). Paying a bill also deals you a choose-one perk card. New piggy types unlock as you go — learn which ones to prioritize (one restores stamina when smashed). The gambling mini-games are skippable; the bankruptcy looming over everything is not a fail state but the prestige mechanic. This guide covers your first cycle — roughly the first two hours.
The skill tree is the biggest single system in the game — multiple branches, ability nodes, and a free-feeling Reset Skills button bottom-left. (Screenshot: Rike Games)
The Run: Stamina Is Your Timer
A "run" is one hammering session at the table. Two numbers matter:
- Stamina (top-left bar; caps grow over the arc — official screenshots show 130-140 mid-game): every swing spends it, and when it's gone, the run is over and your haul is tallied. Anything that reduces swing cost, restores stamina, or raises the cap is effectively more money per run.
- Accuracy: the game tracks whether your swings connect. It matters enough to have an achievement (100% accuracy across 2 consecutive runs) — so early on, deliberate swings beat frantic ones.
Earning milestones are how the game measures your curve — $100, $1,000, $10,000 in a single run are all achievements, and they arrive naturally as upgrades stack.
Bills: The Clock Behind Everything
Every bill has an amount, a due date in days, and the same threat printed on it. (Screenshot: Rike Games)
Bills arrive on a schedule, each with a dollar amount and a due date counted in days. The notice on the bill itself states the penalty: ignore it and 20%-50% gets deducted from your earnings. That's a compounding problem — reduced earnings make the next bill harder.
Two things follow:
- Paying on time is the baseline strategy. The store page is explicit that ignoring bills ends in bankruptcy.
- Paying early is the advanced one — and it's a live community debate. When a launch-day thread asked whether paying early has any benefit, the developer confirmed the hook exists: "There are upgrades in the prestige shop / rings you can get" tied to early payment. One player reports the visible bonuses as bonus attack speed plus an extra piggy when paying early; a completionist review echoes it ("pay off your days early whenever you can — recommended after first bankruptcy — the power boost is great with the +% damage and +piggies because it scales ridiculously well"). A dissenting completionist argues it's never worth it even with the bonuses, and how long the bonuses last (next round? next bill?) went unanswered in the thread — treat the exact stacking rules as unverified. Our read: once you own the relevant prestige rings, early payment is at minimum a free tempo boost.
Paying a bill deals you a perk card — a choose-one-of-three. Examples visible in the official screenshots: Deep Freeze (on-hit chance to freeze all piggies for 2.5s, chance builds per swing), Recovery Smash (+1 stamina per smash), Interest Rate (earn 5% of your savings as bonus coins each run). Perks compound across the cycle, and stamina- and income-scaling picks feed the run economy directly.
Every paid bill is also a build choice. (Screenshot: Rike Games)
The Skill Tree: Where the Money Goes
The tree is large — multiple named directions per the store page: grip strength, caffeine, gym, wrist, luck, plus ability nodes like rock rain and an electrified hammer. A few practical notes:
- There's a Reset Skills button on the tree screen, so a wrong turn isn't permanent. Experiment freely.
- Early nodes are small percentages — one critical launch review calls individual upgrades minor ("you gain a 10% chance to get 5% back when paying a bill") and says the exponential take-off comes later. Expect the first hour to feel incremental in the literal sense; the compounding arrives with perks, better hammers and the prestige layer stacked on top.
- No community-consensus "best path" exists yet this early after release. What the mechanics reward is clear, though: anything that extends runs (stamina) or multiplies loot (luck, damage) feeds everything else. We'll fold in tested builds as the community documents them — treat any specific node math you see elsewhere as unverified for now.
Piggies: Not All Banks Are Equal
New piggy types unlock as you progress, and they behave differently — per the store page: "Some run away, some are too lazy to move, and others carry all the black money you never had."
Each new piggy type comes with a stat card — the Tourist has 22 HP, tiered loot odds (65% for 8-13, 3% for 85-125), and restores stamina when smashed. (Screenshot: Rike Games)
The one to internalize early: piggies that restore stamina on kill (like the Tourist above) effectively extend your run — prioritizing them is free money. (The developer notes the restore amount is small and deliberately not shown as a number, and was rebalanced for the full release.) There's also a Piggies collection tab where discovered types level up (Level 1-4 visible in official screenshots), and a Collection tab for the rare coins that occasionally drop mid-run. One more table guest from a launch-day report: a robber called Goblig who steals your money — and can be hammered like anything else on the table ("He didn't survive," per the player). Single report; the developers had teased a scheming-piggy addition for the full version.
The Shop: Hammers and the $10M Ceiling
The hammer ladder — $4,000, $50,000, $250,000, $1M, $10M — plus décor items up to $210,000. Buying everything is an achievement. (Screenshot: Rike Games)
Hammers aren't straight upgrades — per the developers, they trade off: higher crit with smaller radius vs. fast swings with big radius and less damage. Match the hammer to how you play (precision single-target vs. sweeping crowds — the crowd option also feeds the Multismasher achievement). The full shelf, décor included, tops out at the $10,000,000 hammer, which is the Bought It All achievement and a late-arc purchase by design.
The Gambling Corner: Mostly Skippable
Coinflip, all-in bets, Double or Nothing, and Piggy Shuffle (track the piggy through a shuffle; win doubles your stake). The honest community read one day in: entertaining, not efficient — "skip the gambling unless it's Double or Nothing and you can clear the full payout in one round," per one completionist, and another reviewer found the coinflip and shuffle underwhelming. On the widespread feeling that the coinflip is rigged: the developer says it's a real "50/50 (physics)" simulation but conceded it "does not feel or turn out to be fair enough" and is considering tilting the odds toward the player — one player's unverified observation is that big bets lose far more often than small ones. You'll still visit each mini-game once: three achievements live here. Do them early while your stake is pocket change.
When the Bills Win
They eventually will — and that's the design. Bankruptcy converts your bill-paying record into Prestige Points for permanent upgrades. When to pull the trigger and what to buy: Bankruptcy & Prestige Guide.
Sources: the official Steam store page (mechanics, piggy behaviors, hammer trade-offs, skill tree branches), official screenshots (stamina values, bill penalty text, perk card text, Tourist stat card, shop prices — all read directly from the images), and launch-week Steam reviews for tips and pacing reports (single-player reports flagged as such). No invented numbers. Written July 30, 2026, at the launch version.