ORCS MUST DIE! DEATHTRAP

The Orcs Must Die! series remains one of the most fun things to be had on PC. The co-op experience in particular is highly addictive and can swallow up hours of your time without you even realizing it. There is no way a fan of Tower Defense games hasn't seen at least one entry in the series. About 4.5 years later it's back with a new installment, called Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap (Deathtrap for short from here on out). Robot Entertainment paid attention to the opinions of the players and thus, decided to... stir the stagnant - admittedly - waters of the third episode. Without further ado, we set up the traps of our preference and throw ourselves into battle once again.

Anyone who came here for the story and not to watch ugly goblins being exterminated in various ways is in the wrong place. For the sake of formality, events pick up some years after the story of Part 3: Maximillian and Gabriella have retired, and now having taken on the role of mentor, have passed the torch to younger generations of Warmages. Their task will be quite difficult, as after the defeat of Vorwick, the orcs have been divided into four factions, led by four generals. The concept is quite similar to that of Unchained (the similarities don't stop there, more below), where both our opponents and the playable Warmages are from many different races. However, it's somewhat disappointing that there isn't some sort of closure in the form of a cutscene etc. when we defeat the last of the Generals. This can be confusing as the game continues as normal with endless runs.

The diversity of our heroes lies not just in their appearance. The 6 characters (plus one that unlocks later) have completely different abilities (2 are engage in melee combat), special traps and ways of playing, so we're talking about asymmetrical gameplay. The Unchained influences are more than evident here, and like that game, they reduce the sense of repetition and encourage you to try new tactics. In fact, the variety in gameplay is expanded even further, as after each enemy wave is completed, we choose between 3 threads, which are passive abilities that strengthen our traps, e.g. cheaper cost for floor traps, various effects to last longer, etc. or directly each character, such as more powerful healing, more damage while they are in the air, etc. The hundreds of available threads, lead to different character progression each time. We can extend their variety, either by buying them from the appropriate npc in the main hub, or by completing in-game challenges.

The roguelite style of the game should be underlined here, as it is the main feature that sets Deathtrap apart from its predecessors. Threads are the temporary upgrades, which are in effect while we clear missions. When we stop (or are defeated), we forfeit them. By completing missions, we collect skulls. The further we get, the greater the rewards. To move on to the next map, we gamble a portion of them, and if we decide to quit before starting a map, we return to the main hub with no losses. There, we can use them to buy permanent upgrades from the extensive skill tree. Some nodes are separate for each Warmage, but the majority of them are shared between characters, meaning we don't have to spend countless hours unlocking them all.

While heroes can become powerful during a long run, the biggest contribution to damage and enemy elimination (I'd say at a 70-30 ratio) should come from traps. If that's not the case, then you're playing the wrong way. Of the skulls you collect after completing missions, the gold are for buying new traps, and the rest is for investing in upgrades. This includes, among other things, longer range, longer active duration, etc. Many classics from previous entries return, such as the flip trap, the swinging mace etc. but we also have a few new additions such as the Acid Shower, the Morningstar Shooter etc. It's very important to have a setup with traps of different damage types to create big combos. Big combos mean a lot of rune coins, which allow us to spread out a lot of traps, early on in each mission.

And speaking of missions, we should mention the structure of the game. This merges the main campaign, with the Scramble Mode of Orcs Must Die! 3 and the Endless Mode. Let's look at it in more detail... Our goal here is to defeat the 4 bosses of the game. To reach the first one, we first have to go through 2 maps, to reach the second one we have to go through 3 maps and so on. Each map containing a boss is only one wave where, in addition to the common units, the boss relevant to the area appears. They have some dangerous abilities, like regenerating the health of all enemies, disabling our traps for a while etc. The best tactic in these cases is (usually) to eliminate the normal mobs as quickly as possible and then focus on the boss, as it has a huge health bar.

For each mission we choose between 3 maps. These come with the corresponding distortion, i.e. a negative effect that we incur until the end of our attempt. These can be, ogres doing increased damage and costing more rift points, Warmages not replenishing their health after the end of each wave, etc. As a result, we always end up choosing the least painful distortion, rather than whichever map we think is easier. So here is another point where the luck factor kicks in. Not just in the sequencing of maps, but also the enemies that are going to appear, whether or not it has corruption or not (any surface it covers prevents traps from being placed there), whether additional enemies will appear, etc. Once we defeat the 4th General, the game essentially goes into an Endless Mode, where we play missions continuously, until we stop one way or another.

The other major change that Deathtrap brings is in the free, finite number of barricades it provides. In the previous Orcs Must Die! it cost rune coins and occupied a slot from our setup. This led to a resource management for sharing resources between actual traps and barricades. The early enemy waves were quite a bit tougher because we didn't have the money to block all the passages or build the most effective killbox. This change in Deathtrap allows us to set up our defenses from the start. At a minimum we can block additional opponents' pathways to the Rift, and through some threads (or if we skip one of them), we can increase the maximum number we can place. The extra barricades may well be used to optimize our killbox, narrowing the path of pain that Shrek's cousins will follow. The area design also revolves around this change. Influenced, again, by Unchained, the maps are quite complex, with few exceptions. They all include 4 gates where enemy units burst through - meaning we have to channel their paths to 1-2 places - and over a large area they are quite open, making it impractical to place barricades at these points.

Which brings us to the obligatory grumbling. I won't mention things that have been fixed in the latest patch, and that was the reason why this review was delayed. The maps, while complicated as mentioned, in the end there are specific places where we can effectively set up our defenses. Except for cases of corrupted areas that altered our plans a bit, we ended up after a few playthroughs building specific killboxes per map, with little variation. Overall, the layout of the areas, leaves much space unutilized and was more there for gawking at than anything else. Additionally, in about 60-65 hours of play we had seen all the maps and more importantly, unlocked everything: traps, heroes, threads and skill trees. So the only incentive to keep playing is if you want to try different heroes or traps, and there's nothing to spend skulls on. Also aside from the quirky campaign I described above, there are no additional modes like Endless, Weekly Challenges, etc. As a last remark, Deathtrap runs on Unreal Engine 5. On my system it performed well, namely 70-80 fps at 1440p, at high to ultra settings, with the occasional drops when there was a barrage of effects and lots of mobs on the screen. Nevertheless I consider it an unnecessary transition, as it's not like the series lacked impressive graphics, let alone when it comes to indie works where the art style has carried the visuals. I think an excellent result had been achieved in OMD! 3. I'm not saying, the lightining, reflections, vegetation etc are stunning but at what cost (in hardware)... Hell, if most people can't slay orcs with an at least decent performance, then what's the point?

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap brings several new ideas to the table and takes steps in the right direction. Cooperative play (for the first time even supporting up to 4 players), maps with varied layout, many different heroes and of course the enjoyable extermination of villains in very imaginative ways are some of its key elements. The thing is that compared to its predecessors (excluding the first in the series)... it runs out of fuel faster. Aside from an optimization patch that would make it accessible to a larger portion of the audience, what it desperately needs is new content in the form of new traps, maps, characters, etc. For now, it seems like the developers are there and listening to player feedback. If you had a good time with the previous installments, we see no reason to pass this one up.

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