Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is the latest entry in Robot Entertainment’s beloved series and introduces a compelling roguelite formula, which requires a significant investment of time and dedication to be mastered with the aim to bring the experience to higher levels.

Best enjoyed in co-op, Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is a seriously satifsying tower defence game about destroying as many orcs as you can. With a wealth of traps to place and a number of skills and weapons up your sleeve, you'll need to be creative and strategic to get the most out of the game — but success doesn't always come easy.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is a thrilling rogue-like that gets continually better the more you play, whether alone or with friends.

After years of the series feeling running in place, the roguelite and hero-based approach to Orcs Must Die’s decade-old tower-defense formula feels perfect. Deathtrap is a return to form with much-appreciated new twists like 4-player co-op, upgradable traps, hero abilities, and much bigger maps. Although the barricade limit is a solid deal-breaker, Deathtrap feels and plays like a solid Orcs Must Die! game and finally feels like a proper step forward for a series that felt like it was doomed to be forever chasing past successes.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap combines intense action with some minor roguelike elements for a Tower Defence game like no other.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap blends Tower Defense, third-person action, and roguelike elements into a chaotic yet addictive package. Despite some quirks and a weak tutorial, its fun traps and solid multiplayer make it a must-play for strategy fans.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap brings a breath of fresh air that has been absent from the series in recent years. With better optimization and more content in the form of new Warmages, traps, maps and modes it could easily become one of the best entries in the series.

Orcs Must Die: Deathtrap retains the frenzied fun of its predecessors despite a mixed bag of format changes.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap's new rogue-lite mechanics add some interesting twists to a classic formula, but the tower defense aspects are the true star of the show.

It's been a long time since I played Orcs Must Die!, but this franchise and this studio are always at the forefront of trying to apply new ideas to the genre and take it a little further, which is always appreciated.

Death Trap proves that the series' basic formula is still a hell of a lot of fun. The moments of triumph, when your traps work in perfect sync, or when you throw an orc into a lava pit and watch it bounce off the saw blades, are still just as satisfying as they were a decade ago.

The upgrades, the new orc species, and the controls and mechanics of the new character have added a lot of fun to a saga that at first seemed to have nothing new to offer. It's a good game, but I think it still needs more innovation in its main mechanics.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is good, but in a very workmanlike sort of way. Although it's not the most surprising or inventive multiplayer game on the market, it upholds the strong balance of strategy and real-time gameplay that made the franchise so beloved in the first place. Fans of previous entries may be somewhat split on things like the roguelike progression and heavier emphasis on multiplayer at the cost of solo play, but the strengths of the series are still there, and in some ways, they're more finely tuned than ever.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap's roguelite spin on the action-tower defense series works pretty well. Even if most of its traps and endless parade of highly killable enemies are carried over from past games, the new Warmages' abilities and the combined impact of its randomized modifiers can really shake things up nicely for quite a few runs.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is a blast with friends, but returning fans may find that not enough has changed to warrant a return visit.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap feels like the result of expanding in every direction except forward. While it throws plenty of new elements into the mix, none of them stand out as true innovations over Orcs Must Die! 3. That said, it does have its strengths: a few great ideas, an enjoyable soundtrack, wide-open maps, a skill tree, and even and genuinely engaging gameplay. Just don’t even think about playing solo—you’ll end up suffering twice as much for the effort.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap takes a now-established idea and gives it new life via a roguelike progression system. Whilst the foundation of the idea is still solid and provides many an hour of fun, the implementation is needlessly grindy and imperfectly scaled. Deathtrap is not the evolution of the series we wanted it to be. It’s still a good amount of fun but falls short of its ultimate potential.

The introduction of a roguelike element in Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap results in a somewhat contradictory fusion. Setting up a defence with traps and tearing apart entire columns of Orcs remains highly entertaining, especially with friends, with constant pressure forcing you to adjust your strategy, wave by wave, map by map. However, progression through the levels is inconsistent and outside of combat it's simply uninteresting. Even so, Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap offers many good moments of gameplay, if its slow progression doesn't bore you.

A typically snappy entry in the best series that action tower defence has to offer, held back by a repeating roguelite structure that's only partially successful.

As someone who plays a lot of games, it is very rare to question “Why am I doing this?” “Why am I getting platinum trophies?” “Why am I levelling up every sub-class?” “Why am I prestiging?” We do it because it's fun, or satisfying, or because it will reward us in some way. Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap had me questioning those rewards and that satisfaction in a very fundamental way. I have leveled up characters, beat hidden bosses, and gotten golden gun skins… But to what end though? So I can do it again? So I can move the boulder ever slightly further up the mountain before it slides back down again? For most games, we do it because the answer is, “It's fun.”...Simply put, the act of playing Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is not fun enough to abate that existential question from rattling around your head while you play.