GBAtemp Recommends: Orcs Must Die!

The tower defence genre is an interesting type of strategy game, where you often can’t directly fight your obstacles. Most of them, like Plants vs. Zombies for example, will only let you set up your defences in between waves of enemies, and you’ve got to just sit there and watch the onslaught and hope you built enough. Others might let you do minor repairs or keep laying objects during the attack, but there’s still no direct engagement with the horde. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s exciting to watch in helpless agony as you see if you planned far enough ahead to keep up. But it can sometimes feel a little stale too, especially as you work your way through the easier levels at the beginning of a game. Orcs Must Die! addresses this by combining the tower defence genre with a third-person action game, making the player the most powerful tool in defeating waves of enemies. This gives them something to do during an attack while still tapping in to everything that makes tower defence so good in the first place.

The setup is fairly simple. You play as a mage who needs to defend The Rift, a glowing ball of energy. The Rift only has so many hit points, and it loses one any time an enemy reaches it (bigger enemies can cause it to lose five or ten points at a time). If you die, it costs five Rift points to revive you. If the Rift hits 0 points, you lose. Fairly standard for a tower defence game.

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Each level follows a similarly standard routine; first, you’re given time to explore the level, choose your loadout and lay traps. With their detached perspective, a lot of tower defence games don’t make great use of 3D space. Since Orcs Must Die! doesn’t need to provide a full view of the map, it can use more details in the area to let you strategize around. There are elevated areas where you can safely install archers so they can eliminate enemies without being hurt themselves. There are tight choke points where you can combine floor, wall and ceiling traps for devastating effect. Like most strategy games, learning the map here is the most fun part. You can see what clever tricks have been put in to the map to trip you up, and your mind starts racing to figure out the most efficient way to slow the enemies’ progress.

Next, you unleash the horde, and see how your plan holds up in practice. This taps in to the normal tower defence satisfaction of seeing waves of enemies fall before your automated defences, but in a slightly different way. Since there’s usually more than one entry point for the enemies, or more than one Rift point to defend, you can’t watch everything at once while killing enemies yourself, so your eyes are often darting back and forth between the enemies in front of you and the mini map to check for stragglers. Even if you’re not seeing the enemies die at your automated traps, it’s still extremely satisfying to know that you’ve prepared sufficiently. You can usually even dawdle over to that end of the map to enjoy the carnage and revel in your victory.

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And if you do see some red dots scurry past your defended area, that tension that had been building boils over. The mini map doesn’t differentiate between enemies, so you’ve got no idea if you’re being overrun by lumbering giants that take forever to kill, speedy runners that slip past you and go directly for the Rift, or flyers that bypass obstacles and are harder to take out yourself. Then you’ve got to decide if you have time to handle what’s in front of you before you run to the other side of the map, or if you need to run back and forth between the two. Again, it taps into that stomach-in-your-throat feeling you get in tower defence games when you see your defences crumbling, but instead of having to sit there and watch it happen, you get a little rush of adrenaline as you try to rush over and pull everything together.

In between waves, you’ll get about ten seconds to adjust your defences, and once or twice a level you’ll be given infinite time to completely revise your strategy. You’ll also usually have enough money at this point to buy weavers, upgrades that can grant you or your traps various special abilities. It’s a needed little moment to catch your breath before the next wave.

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Orcs Must Die! is a great example of how to tweak a genre. The majority of it plays like any old tower defence game, but that one core change manages to affect the way everything else plays. It’s a perfectly high-concept video game; one simple change, a one-line premise, and you’ve got something totally new and unique.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of GBAtemp Recommends. If you'd like to see more, leave your feedback in the thread below or check out our previous articles.

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Deleted member 546149

Well-Known Member

Member

Level 17

Jul 19, 2021

Wasn't this game made like a billion years ago?

Hayato213

Newcomer

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Level 28

Jul 19, 2021

WiiMiiSwitch said:
Wasn't this game made like a billion years ago?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcs_Must_Die!

10 years ago.

Deleted member 546149

Well-Known Member

Member

Level 17

Jul 19, 2021

Hayato213 said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcs_Must_Die!

10 years ago.

No, that's when WiiMii Must Die was created

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BitMasterPlus

Well-Known Member

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Level 9

Jul 19, 2021

Haven't heard of this game, might play it.

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K3Nv2

Village Idiot

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Level 15

Jul 20, 2021

What did those orcs ever do to you besides try to kill you?

Kwyjor

Well-Known Member

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Level 14

Jul 20, 2021

I actually played this game for a little while when it first came out. I liked that it actually had some character in regards to the main character and the enemies. Sanctum is a similar tower defense game that came out around the same time and it is downright sterile and bland in comparison.

Alas, it failed to hook me. Probably because it was a little too nerve-wracking.

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Julie_Pilgrim

Secretly three raccoons in a trench coat

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Level 9

Jul 20, 2021

#orclivesmatter

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Taleweaver

Storywriter

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Level 19

Jul 21, 2021

I always wondered how orcs managed to reach adulthood. I mean... They're always described as violent, muscular, short tempered, dumb and pretty much born with a club or an axe in hand.
So how do they manage to survive kintergarden, let alone live long enough to mindlessly charge violently into the first non-orc they see, defying all odds?

Ahem... But that aside : I have good memories of orcs must die 2. Not enough to grab me for longer periods (once you've killed 10'000 monsters in game A, it kind of spoiled you for life for other games as well), but it was fun.