Orcs Must Die!

The game was released for Xbox Live Arcade and Windows PCs in October 2011.

• Title — Orcs Must Die! • Developer — Robot Entertainment • Engine — Vision • Series — Orcs Must Die! • Genre — Tower defense, action • Platforms — * Xbox 360 • Microsoft Windows • Released — XBLA October 5, 2011 Windows / OnLive

• Illustration — Placing defenses in the game Orcs Must Die! is a variant of a tower defense game; the player as the War Mage must defend one or more Rifts on each level from an onslaught of orcs and other creatures that emerge from one or more entrances and traverse the level. Generally, each orc that reaches a Rift deducts a point from the starting Rift Score while specialized orcs may take off more points; if the Rift Score drops to zero, the level is lost and the player will have to start again. The orc armies arrive in increasingly more difficult waves, with each level having between four and twelve waves. In general, waves will begin a few seconds after the player defeats the prior one, but roughly every three waves on all bar Nightmare difficulty, the player is given a break where they can set up traps and initiate the next wave when they are ready. As the War Mage, the player has the ability to place numerous traps and arm themselves with weapons and equipment to defeat the orcs. The player selects a number of traps and equipment (up to ten) from their current Spellbook; once the player starts placing traps they will be bound to this selection. Traps can be placed on any appropriate surface, but each trap costs in-game currency to place, and traps will have variable costs based on their effectiveness. Traps typically work once and then have a reset period before they will activate again. Such traps include floor, wall, and ceiling traps, and several Guardians that will act on their own accord. The player is given an amount of money to spend on trap placement at the start, and earns more by defeating the orcs and after completing waves; money can also be dropped by certain monsters that must be collected by the player. Traps can be placed at any time, including in combat, and between waves, placed traps can be removed and refunded for their cost. Later, the player gains access to Weavers, who for various costs can boost certain effects on the player or traps placed in the manner of a technology tree; these effects only last for that level. Once the player initiates a wave, they can run about the level to participate in combat or place additional traps. The player must watch their health and mana used for their weapons but orcs may drop health and mana potions that will replenish these; alternatively the player can heal while in proximity of the Rift. If the player should lose all their health or fall off the level, they will respawn back at the Rift but this will cost them a number of Rift Points. After defeating the last wave, the player is awarded a number of skulls, up to 5 (or on Apprentice difficulty, limited to two), based on their score (reflecting how many Rift points remain) and the time needed to defeat all the waves. Skulls are used to buy improvements to traps and weapons in the player's spellbook, such as increasing damage, reducing cost, or making them more effective against the orcs. The player, after completing each level the first time, is also rewarded with a new trap type for their Spellbook they can use in subsequent levels. These improvements remain with the player, so that they may return to earlier levels with these improved traps to earn more skulls.

In a fantasy world, civilization is dependent on magic that's used to bring the rains, cure the sick, erect enchanted fortresses, and so on, and which comes from rifts, openings leading to "the dead world of the orcs". The game takes place entirely within great fortresses built on the other side of the rifts, where incursions of the orcs, a race of murderous savages, are held at bay by an elite faction of wizards and warriors called the Order. The dregs of the Order are a cranky old master war mage who loathes his apprentice, dies in an accident in the opening cutscene, and takes up the role of narrating the game's cinematics, and his apprentice, a dim-witted egoist fool and the player character, who takes up his master's weapons and is known as the War Mage (voiced by Robert McCollum). The War Mage turns out to be a savant, tearing through force after force of attacking orcs (and ogres and gnolls, etc.) and having the time of his life. For example, he ends each successful level with a victory dance that grows more elaborate the better he performed, including doing the splits if the player is rated the full five skulls out of five. As he defends fortress after fortress, the War Mage soon notes that the orc attacks are becoming more organized, striking where the Order's defenses are thin and incorporating creatures that had no business cooperating with orcs. He brushes it off as more to kill, but the orcs have turned from a mob into an invading army and the Order, who were always vastly outnumbered and had to rely on the disorder of their enemy, are gradually ground into the dirt offscreen leaving the War Mage as the only surivor. The culprit is revealed to be the Sorceress (voiced by Colleen Clinkenbeard), a former paragon of the Order who betrayed it to seek personal power. She has mind controlled the orcs, and is trying to take them to the world of her origin to rule both worlds. She speaks in the War Mage's mind with threats, promises, taunts and attempts at seduction, and gets nowhere, the War Mage being more concerned with killing orcs. Eventually he concludes that his position is hopeless and uses magic to close the rifts, destroying all magic on both sides forever. In doing so he strands the Sorceress in the dead world of the orcs at the mercy of her enraged erstwhile slaves, gives up his dream job, and saves his world from the orcs but dooms it to decline. His master observes that the War Mage proved the only member of the Order able to bear the dire consequences of doing so to their world, and is left pondering whether he witnessed an act of supreme courage or supreme stupidity.

Orcs Must Die! 2 was released on July 30, 2012. The sequel includes two-player co-op with the introduction of the Sorceress in a playable role. Orcs Must Die! Unchained, the third game in the series, was released on April 18, 2017 for the Windows platform, while the PlayStation 4 version was released on July 18. It was released under a free-to-play model. Orcs Must Die! 3 was initially released on Stadia on July 14, 2020, and later for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. Unlike previous games, which generally had a dungeon and tower defense design with limited pathways for enemies to attack from, Orcs Must Die! 3 features larger, open battlefields in a feature called "War Scenarios". Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap, which features 4-player cooperative multiplayer and elements commonly found in roguelite games, was released in January 2025, for Windows and Xbox Series X/S.