Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap
Following the (late) success of Orcs Must Die! 3, Robot Entertainment releases the spin-off Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap, which retains many of the core elements of the series, but this time without a linear campaign, focusing instead on replayability with roguelite elements. A good idea?
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is still a mix of third-person action and tower defense, although players build stationary traps on walls, the ground or the ceiling rather than classic towers. Players must defend one or more locations, usually crystals, on the map from attacking hordes of orcs and their allies. If too many orcs attack the crystal being defended, the game is over. So players have to build clever combinations of nasty traps (fire, acid, lasers, crossbows, spikes, swinging clubs, barbed vines, tar and more) exactly where the enemies will run - shown by holograms between rounds. It is also possible to build barricades to influence the enemy's movement path, creating bottlenecks or, even better, combining several enemy paths into one, ending in a great orc-destroying gauntlet. Barricades are now free, but the number of barricades that can be placed is limited to 16, meaning that players will have to think carefully about where to place them, especially as the orcs tend to come in through multiple entrances.