Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is a fun game with some serious looks and performance issues on Xbox Series consoles. If it’s cleaned up at all by a day one patch then it’s an easy recommendation. Available Day One on Game Pass it’s a solid solo title and one that’s a ton of fun with friends.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is great where it really counts. Building traps and setting up elaborate killboxes using a variety of traps and status effects is incredibly satisfying. The 3rd-Person Action is serviceable but does not excel. Unfortunately controlling the menus on a controller is an absolute pain and feels very slow, imprecise and often just plain bad.

As far as a round-based tower-defence action game goes, Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap nails the task at hand well. It's entertaining, highly replayable, fine as a solo experience and better as a cooperative one, and it has stunning visuals too. After a bunch of hours it can feel a bit one-dimensional and repetitive due to its lacking narrative and steady progression, but as far as an easy and intuitive game to pick up and enjoy with friends goes, there's a lot to love and appreciate about this latest chapter in the series.

The core tower defense mechanics remain as fun and satisfying as ever, allowing for creative trap combinations and cooperative play with up to four players. However, the roguelite elements feel forced, leading to repetitive gameplay, frustrating difficulty scaling, and a lack of long-term incentives.

Overall Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is a fun tower defence game that features a vast selection of roguelike elements to help you kill as many orcs as possible. You’ll upgrade and unlock everything you can to survive each wave you go through, all to defeat the ending boss of each run. Despite its lacking soundtrack and story, you’re guaranteed to have fun for hours in co-op or solo.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is not as fun as Orcs Must Die 3 but there is still some enjoyment here. Coming up with creative trap lanes and watching the orcs run helplessly into them is always a joy. And the fact that the game is on Xbox Game Pass lowers the barrier of entry to test it out; at least if you have Game Pass. But with brutal difficulty, playable War Mages whose albitites just feel lackluster and no real narrative to speak of this entry feels more like two steps back in the series rather than one step forward.