daniellogan Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap Review

Orcs Must Die Deathtrap is a fun roguelike take on the OMD formula. Unlike a traditional OMD where you go through a campaign and then repeat with some difficulty tweaks, in this format you do runs that involve playing on a different map each mission, picking from different negative modifiers, and getting buffs each wave. I've put in just under 200 hour as of the time of writing this review. Mostly with two teammates but probably 50 hours or so solo. It's all viable especially since the enemies stagger a bit more solo and you get more barricades. The game can feel pretty slow to start on the lowest difficulty which I think can turn people off of the game. They made it so you can up the difficulty right away so I'd recommend doing an initial run on 0 and then upping it to like difficulty 2 pretty quickly. The weakest part of this game is the start. The tutorial videos aren't the best and then you launch into a large map where enemies slowly get to you. Thankfully there has been a lot of feedback given already on that and some new small maps are coming soon to help with the flow of first getting started. I think the new way they handle barricades is actually good and many of the reviews are dramatically overreacting. It's different so people freak out. You start out with a bunch of free barricades now and then can get more via threads, via skipping threads, and by using the rift barricade trap. I've seen people who get over 100 of the free to use ones in a run. It's a good format that helps keeps runs varied instead of just zig zagging enemies forever on maps. All of the characters are pretty interesting. Some absolutely need buffs to be viable higher difficulty options but they are all pretty fun. My favorite is Kalos. Being able to launch yourself across the map in order to take out priority targets is really fun and rewarding. There is also plenty of content coming. All future maps will be free. There is a new character coming this month that will also be free. A more traditional endless is coming too. There is a lot in the works and the devs do listen to feedback and are clearly working hard to continue to improve the game. I've had a blast and would easily recommend this game