HOLD YOUR ORCSES

ORCS MUST DIE!: DEATHTRAP remains a bloody good time despite some growing pains

- By Jonathan Bolding

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That mantra could apply to horde shooters in general – demonstrating through games like Helldivers 2 and Deep Rock Galactic that mowing down thousands of something will always be cool – as easily as it could apply to Orcs Must Die!, a series which spent the last decade content to reprise its novel blend of tower defence and third-person shooting with steely consistency. Trends come and go, industries shift and change, but orcs? Orcs must die, and that's just not the sort of thing you mess with.

Until now, anyway. The series has seen an overhaul in Deathtrap as it reaches for that holy grail of infinite roguelike replayability. In past entries, Orcs Must Die! had static level layouts, and like any tower defence game, a robust enough setup would become a factory line of firepower so efficient that no amount of orcs could successfully pile through.