Despite the Orcs Must Die! franchise having been around over a decade I’ve never got around to playing one. They’ve always looked interesting with their blend of shooter and tower defense, just for one reason or another I never picked one up. When I saw Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap was releasing at the end of the month I thought it was a perfect time to give the series a try. It did not disappoint.
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap sticks with the formula that’s got the series to this point. It’s got that great tower defense formula mixed with the third person shooting. If you are looking for comparisons to the previous games, unfortunately this won’t be the review for you. But from everything I can gather this plays similar to the previous games. For newcomers however, this is a great launching point. There isn’t a story or anything to follow outside of a quick little cut scene at the beginning of the game but you won’t feel lost.
After said scene you start in the games main hub. It’s setup as a castle and gives you everything you need to build up your characters, known as War Mages. There’s NPC’s to talk to that will help you level up the War Mages, unlock and upgrade traps, launch the next mission and much more. You will also get to choose one of six War Mages to use, with a 7th you can unlock if you find the collectibles within the castle. The 7th War Mage, Max, is by far the most powerful so I’d suggest finding the collectibles as soon as possible. We will have a guide up shortly for this.
Each War Mage comes equipped with its own special abilities and weapons. Some do melee attacks while others are ranged. The War Mages themselves and how they play kind of reminded me of Overwatch characters for some reason. You can level your Mages up to level 100 which thankfully the skill tree is mostly shared. There are 63 shared skills to unlock, mostly things such as 10% trap damage increase, more health etc etc. Each Mage also has 6 unique skills you can purchase as well. The sharing of skills allows you to test out all the Mages a bit more rather than focusing on one.
In order to get said skill points you need to play missions to earn the in game currency, skulls. Skulls will be of the upmost importance to you throughout the game if you plan on making long runs. So lets get into it.
Defend The Rift
The core gameplay loop of the game is quite simple. You get a choice of 3 different maps to start, each one having a challenge attached to them. The challenge could be something easy to deal with like head shots don’t cause as much damage or something more difficult like traps will cost double. While not labelled as a strategy game, you will need to use a lot of strategy to succeed, and it starts with making the right decisions when picking a map.
Once you’ve made your choice you will load into the game and begin to decide your strategy. Each mission consists of 6 waves (unless its a boss map which is 1 wave) of enemies, getting more difficult with each wave. The Orcs are dead set on getting to the Rift on the map and either attacking it or jumping into it to make it lose points. Lose all your points and it’s game over. Most maps typically have 4 doors the Orcs will come out of. They start coming out of 2 and then as you progress the other doors will open.
Before you even start laying traps you will want to survey the map and decide your strategy. You receive 16 barricades per mission which will let you block off paths and guide the Orcs wherever you want them to go. It was a lot of fun just figuring out the best way to use my barricades. I had some maps where the Orcs could quite literally only get to the rift with 1 path. This made it quite easy to just fill that path with ample amounts of traps. It got to the point where I could lay my traps and just relax as no Orc would make it through. Other maps are much more difficult and require more strategy to figure them out.
I should note that even with the barricades there are sometimes flying Orcs. Flying orcs are far less common in each wave, but they do come. Flying Orcs can fly over your barricades so even if you lay the perfect plan you will still need to keep an eye on your rift incase one or 2 get through. Orcs also need at least 1 path to the rift at all times. If you block off all paths to the rift they will attack the barricades to make a path.
Speaking of the traps I was quite impressed by the variety of them. There are various ceiling, floor and wall traps. You can pick your load out at the beginning of a mission but cannot change them after that, so choose wisely. There is a secondary currency in the game that is used solely in missions for the laying of traps and purchasing of sentinels (NPC’s that are stationary and help you defend the rift). You start the mission with a set amount of coins to lay your traps and earn more as you kill the Orcs allowing you to purchase more between waves.
C-C-C-Combo!
What is most important to success outside of the placing of the barricades is getting combos with your traps and attacks. The higher your combo the more mission coins and skulls you will earn which will help you lay more traps and level up your Mage in the hub later. Because of this you will want to lay a variety of traps. A combo is achieved by killing an Orc who is affected by multiple things. So instead of laying 10 fire traps in a row, you will want to lay a fire and ice trap with a grinder wall trap for example. If the Orc is affected by all 3 and you shoot/hit them then you will get a 4x combo. Add a 5th element and its a 5x combo, so on and so forth.
Combos also affect your ultimate ability that you need to charge up. Each Mage has a unique ultimate move that once you reach 100%. The ultimate skills are quite powerful and can really help you out in a pinch changing the tide of a difficult wave. The only way to get your ultimate gauge filled is either by killing with a combo or picking up a potion that will fill the gauge slightly if dropped by an enemy.
The last thing we need to talk about are thread cards. After each defeated wave you will get to choose 1 of 3 random cards. Each card is a way to help you succeed in your run, or make it more difficult but increase your rewards. These cards can be anything from increase your primary or trap damage, to getting more coins for the next wave. How you approach these cards is kind of up to what you are looking to achieve. If you are looking to only do 1 mission then going for extra coins to help might be best. However if you are planning to do multiple missions in 1 sitting you may want to choose a card that will help you in the long run, such as cheaper traps or more damage. Thread cards will follow you on your entire run from mission to mission until you succeed or fail so choosing the right ones can make a huge difference.
Care To Gamble Or Will You Play It Safe?
So far I’ve only talked about a singular mission and after reading that last paragraph you might be wondering what I mean by doing more than one mission. Once you’ve completed the first map is where your next choice comes. The game will show you how many skulls you earned during that mission and present you with a choice. Do you gamble half your skulls and continue to the next mission, or take your earnings and return to the hub to level up and buy new traps?
When deciding to gamble forward you will be given the same choices you were when you first started with 3 new maps and 3 new challenges. Whatever you chose the first time will carry on to each new mission so be careful with your decision. Once you’ve chosen you will go to that next map and begin all over again. Your coins do not carry over however your rift’s health does. If you beat mission 1 while only losing a couple rift points you can probably safely move to the next mission. Only have a few rift points left? You are taking a big risk by moving on.
The game starts out with only having 3 missions. The third mission will be a single boss battle wave. The boss comes with a horde of Orcs as well so don’t think its just a boss battle. Typically I would just focus on killing all the Orcs and then moving on to the boss as the boss won’t do anything to the rift. Defeat all 3 missions and you will go back to the hub with a heap of skulls to help your upgrades. You will also then notice when you start a new run it will be 4 missions long with a boss at the 4th mission. Complete a 4 mission run and it moves to a 5 mission run all the way up to 10 missions in 1 run.
I should also tell you now that each mission takes roughly 20-30 minutes to complete. So if you are planning to do a long run of 5 missions or more be prepared to slice out a big piece of your day or night to get it done.
Better With Friends
While Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is a great game playing by yourself, where it really shines is with co-op. You can play with up to 3 other players and the game will scale it’s difficulty to how many players are in your game. Everyone will all have less coins to use which will make team work paramount. You will also always have 16 barricades but they will be split amongst the group. Figuring out new strategies to with more players made the game feel fresh and a joy to play. I would often find myself using a strategy solo and then my friend would join in and we’d find an even better one.
Playing in co-op also meant better strategy with traps. With combo’s being so important it would be best for your friends to have different traps to build that combo up. Instead of everyone carrying the same fire trap you’d want perhaps one player being an ice focused load out while another focuses on fire and you lay your traps together. It should also be said for each additional player you would lose 1 slot in your load out making it even more difficult.
Some Small Issues
While this review has been mostly glowing there are a few issues, though most of them are small. For starters the UI on Xbox. Doing everything in the menus is done by point and click. It’s a really small thing but it was kind of a baffling decision. Instead of just scrolling down and hitting A on a skill or trap to unlock I’d have to use my left or right stick to move to what i wanted to click on. I’d then have to move the stick again down to click Ok or accept rather than just hitting A. Just felt like a weird choice.
Also while the game for the most part ran stable both myself and my co-op partners had some issues. The first mission of every session got a network error and booted me about 3 waves in. I wouldn’t get the issue anytime after that until the next day. While not the end of the world it was kind of annoying knowing my first 10-15 minutes of the game each night were going to be a waste of my time. Perhaps it was just an issue with the review build but it was an issue either way.
Co-op also at times would get severe frame drops. Sometimes it would only last a few seconds and one time it lasted for 3 entire missions. It’s hard to pin that down to a game issue or if it was just Xbox’s network being a bit wonky that night so I can’t really knock the game too much for that but it had to be mentioned incase it is a game issue.
Lastly for some the game will likely begin to feel repetitive after awhile. Once you’ve played a map once or twice you kind of know exactly what to expect and how to beat it. The mission structure helps keep them somewhat fresh by adding the different challenges but for some they may simply play the game a few hours and feel like they’ve seen it all. And considering the achievement list being quite the task to complete, those looking to 100% the game will probably be over it by the time they get that last achievement.
Conclusion
Despite a few minor flaws and the potential repetitiveness, Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is a great game. With it’s blend of tower defense, shooting and strategy it is a game worth playing with a lot of fun to be had, especially with friends. Finding the best way to tackle each mission and laying waste to the Orcs with traps and your Mage will provide you with plenty of entertainment. I can safely say after 20 plus hours of Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap, this Orcs Must Die noob won’t be skipping the series anymore.
This review was played on an Xbox Series X. I’d like to thank developer Robot Entertainment for providing a review code for the purpose of this review.
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is available on Xbox Series S/X, Steam and Epic Game Store. It is also available day 1 on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
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