Robot Entertainment’s Orcs have a death wish. Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is the fourth entry in the Orcs Must Die! franchise, and, alongside a wily exclamation mark, it brings with it the surety that you will be seeing off green-skinned hordes in a carefully cultivated range of violent and creative ways. This time, you can do it with even more of your friends. The formula remains as strong as ever, but beyond the increased multiplayer options, it feels exceedingly familiar.
Orcs Must Die! began life as one of the darlings of Xbox Live Arcade, bringing together third-person action and tower defence in a crazy, colourful way. You’re tasked with protecting the rift, a magical portal that the Orcs are inexplicably drawn towards without any care for their own safety. They’re so focused on the task at hand that you can lay down knee-high barriers that will blindly force them to take a different route towards the rift, and if you’re smart about it, you can also pop myriad traps and horrible contraptions in their way so that they, you know… die. Oh… wait, Die!
That formula remains largely unchanged in Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap. The levels have been stretched out to accommodate up to four players, though if you’re playing on your own, they’re still approachable. There’s now a broader range of ways to kill the Orcs, though the classic spike traps and wall-mounted arrow launchers are as effective and iconic as ever, which makes them surprisingly hard to leave behind.
There’s six different War Mages to choose from at the outset, each of which has their own unique look, individual abilities and weaponry to fight in addition to their traps. The strange thing is, I don’t think that all of these hero characters have been given the same love and attention. The giant war mage bear, Kalos, looks fantastic, plays well, has weaponry that feels as though it’s making some impact and his special abilities prove genuinely useful during a mission by healing you and your team. Mac, meanwhile, not only looks rough – they’re part android with a massive wrench – but their special ability just lets you float really high. There’s also a cat called Sophie who speaks in a standard human voice and without any attempt at cat puns.
It’s a real shame that there isn’t more variety to the hero characters, especially when a team of four different players can use up the entire roster in one sitting. I understand that these are not easy or simple things to create, balance or design, but when the game itself has shifted to a multiplayer focus, I was left wanting more, particularly when some of those that are included just aren’t as much fun to play as. Still with Kalos and Vaan, I had my favourites.
There’s plenty of opportunities for progression in Deathtrap, from character-specific upgrades to an overarching skill tree that covers all of your War Mages. These start out minimal – we’re talking 5% on average – but these build and grow into some serious buffs. There are plenty of other ways to change your fate too, and your possibilities. Alongside expanding your choice of traps, there’s also the Thread Shop. Threads appear following each wave, and they bring a range of buffs or debuffs that might make things harder for you, or easier for you on each run.
I particularly like weighing up the pros and cons of these, and discussing it with my teammates became a key part of our planning and progression. Early on in one run I essentially gave up being able to lay traps in order to gain extra barricades, but it was a short-term gain, and we avoided that Thread for every following run until we could plan and compensate. Other, more useful Threads increase the damage of different traps or the effectiveness of your War Mage’s abilities, and it’s fun to stack these together.
Finishing one successful mission lets you gamble some of the Skulls you’ve earned and carry them, and your Threads, forward, building your run in a Roguelike style. It’s effective and enjoyable, though losing out by gambling can be crushing when it feels as though there’s so many places to spend your Skulls.
I disliked the size of the castle hub that serves as your base, and it’s not characterful enough to earn the time you spend wandering between the different upgrade merchants. If you compare it with Monster Hunter – arguably one of the best series to showcase progressively-expanding central hubs – Deathtrap’s castle feels lifeless in comparison. It could have been much more focused. Or just a menu.
For all of these minor complaints, Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap still feels like a lot of fun to play, especially with a team of four like-minded friends. It’s collaborative, amusing and action-packed, and it still retains much of the series most enjoyable aspects, like yeeting an orc across a map right into a pit of lava, skewering them with multiple pointy things at the same time, and then sending them back around to do it all again.