By Alec Meer on October 4th, 2011 at 9:06 am.
Silently, so silently the Orcs arrived. And silently, so silently, they uploaded a demo of their sort-of-tower-defence opus of sadism to Steam, a week ahead of the full game’s release. A week ahead! No-one does that anymore. Well, not many. Let us celebrate Robot Entertainment’s unexpected kindness! How? Well, by following their single, simple imperative. That imperative being, of course, Orcs Must Die. 995MB of greenskin-bothering awaits the curious (demo link is on the right of that page) right now.
I am one of the curious, but first I must download 21 cocking gigabytes of Rage. Megatextures is a pretty apt name, I guess.
04/10/2011 at 09:13 thekeats1999 says:
Will give this a try tonight on my laptop.
Not hearing good things about Rage either. Lot of CTD’s, no real graphic options (apparently auto scales to the hardware). Also, while pretty, suffers from being a bit of a dull game. Will wait for the WIT before investing in it.
04/10/2011 at 09:13 tKe says:
I will be doing my part to ensure No Orc Lives when I can escape the rigmarole that is the day-job (for us non-game-playing-workers).
As a side note – 21GB of Rage would knock many UK “Fair Usage Policies” for six, and then some.
Now I feel twice-dirty having used a cricket metaphor and for having noticed I used one.
04/10/2011 at 09:30 devlocke says:
Reading “No Orcs Live” made me really want to play a non-existent game called “No Orcs Live Forever” that blends the humor, Cold War-vibe, and awesomeness of “No One Lives Forever” with… err, orcs n’ elves n’ shit. That would probably be awful in real life, but the Aristotelian ideal in my head is fantastic.
04/10/2011 at 10:13 Lars Westergren says:
There is an RPG in development where you play as an orc and a goblin trying to infiltrate human/elven lands, promises to put some unusual twists on the usual fantasy clichés, and have some dark humour. Sounds great as a concept, and the screenshots look promising, but very little actual gameplay has been shown yet. So I don’t know if they mean RPG as in having actual choices anywhere, or if it is a linear “click on things to kill them, watch exposition cutscenes, level up an attack power, wait for inevitable betrayal plot twist” action thing.
Can’t for my life remember the name of it though.
04/10/2011 at 11:39 Isometric says:
Would this be it Mr Westergren? Everytime I see Orcs Must Die I think of this also.
http://www.cyanide-studio.com/games/of-orcs-and-men/
04/10/2011 at 12:06 Lars Westergren says:
Yep, that’s the one. Thank Isometric.
04/10/2011 at 09:15 Belsameth says:
Only 21GB? Long live fiber to the home! \o/
Anyway, looking forward to this. Very much so! Ork killing, that is. Not Rage.
04/10/2011 at 13:37 magnus says:
That’s why I’ve broken my self-imposed, no retail rule.
04/10/2011 at 09:17 bear912 says:
They are quite mega indeed.
04/10/2011 at 09:22 negativedge says:
Today is a day for Dark Souls. Sorry, PC.
04/10/2011 at 10:02 squidlarkin says:
Indeed! More like I Must Die, Over and Over.
04/10/2011 at 20:34 Diziet Sma says:
I’m steering clear of that until I’ve nailed Demon’s Souls. Which I’m playing right now. :D
04/10/2011 at 09:29 Symitri says:
Didn’t id mention that the in-house build was something like 150GB and that the 20-so GB we get are relatively low-texture?
I’m hoping Orcs Must Die ends up being moddable and they replace the orcs with elves. Otherwise, yay demo!
04/10/2011 at 09:51 cliffski says:
id need to look at the bandwidth and download caps of the average gamer. I can’t see that many gamers casually downloading 21GB of game.
04/10/2011 at 10:12 dwm says:
There is competition between ISPs; BeThere/O2, for example, do not have usage caps — of if they do, then they’re so high as to be of no concern in practice.
But they can do this because they run their own network. Those ISPs using BT’s metered-rate wholesale ADSL service for their connectivity.. well, they’re out of luck.
04/10/2011 at 10:41 cliffski says:
A huge chunk of UK gamers are stuck with BT’s infrastructure for the forseeable future, and this game is launched right now. That’s the problem.
Game devs need to be like recording studios. Every studio has a pair of cheap shitty car stereo speakers in them, which producers often use to play the music through to check it sounds ok on crappy equipment. There’s a lesson there :D
04/10/2011 at 11:12 Jumwa says:
Here in Canada two ISPs control it all, and everyone else has to buy through them. Of course, these two ISPs are also the countries biggest cable TV providers, who don’t like it that people are dropping their cable packages for purely the internet. They are also shamelessly working in collusion to force low caps on everyone, and the reigning Conservatives only response was to say “Hey wait! You’ve got to put spying equipment into place so we can monitor all Canadian’s internet traffic. Now bilk them.”
04/10/2011 at 11:34 Syra says:
BT are rubbish, infact everyone in the UK is pretty rubbish but BT have tiny download limits. At least sky (also pants ADSL) and virgin (decent fibreoptic) are actually unlimited, even if they do have fair usage on dowloads and throttle your speed when you go over (I think it’s something like 10gb in a 24 hour period)
04/10/2011 at 12:29 jrodman says:
@cliffski: Regarding recording studios and reviewing the sound on terrible equipment, I suspect this sort of thinking goes hand in hand with the loudness war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
Not that I disagree with the idea you raise, which I would describe as ‘thrift’. I’m just pointing out the concept can be misapplied.
04/10/2011 at 12:59 Williz says:
No fair usage policy on Virgins 50mb line. I love my fast internets.
04/10/2011 at 15:14 Deano2099 says:
Absolutely right Cliffski, what we really need is some way to package that 20gig of data in some of low-cost, small transportable format where it could be distributed through cheaper methods. Then it doesn’t all have to go down internet pipes.
But then maybe I’m just a dreamer.
05/10/2011 at 11:16 Droopy The Dog says:
In terms of human effort and resources, the internet -is- the cheaper option once the infrastructure’s been set down. It’s just people still massively overcharge for the internet.
+1 for BeThere being a lovely ISP with no stupidly restrictive caps and even a nice little web interface that lets you change some connection settings without calling an engineer.
On the other hand I’m cynical and worry they’ll be like every ISP ever and refuse to increase their infrastructure if they ever get a larger number of users and it’ll all slow down painfully. So, erm, don’t go actually -using- them, it might ruin my fun. :P
04/10/2011 at 10:33 Uglycat says:
I like it. Not sure about the auto aiming (unless that was a toggle I missed) but it plays smoothly, and it’s fairly kinetic.
04/10/2011 at 11:30 Syra says:
Demo is fantastic, a good sense of humour as you play as a bit of a douche who does silly dances and says dopey things between waves. Really fast paced too, I didn’t expect it to be so enjoyable as I generally hate tower defence game. It definitely made me want to play more …
however I can’t and won’t buy it because the sheer clickyness of it brought back my RSI. If only you could hold down to spam crossbow bolts instead of having to click like a madman!
04/10/2011 at 13:08 Gnarl says:
Indeed. Although I have luckily avoided the gamer’s complaint previously, this game feels like it might instigate it. I tried the snipey head shot method, but it doesn’t seem to be quite as effective as the spamming for taking out large numbers.
04/10/2011 at 21:16 Star Guarded says:
To those who report of clickiness: it’s actually way more effective to use the crossbow as a sniping machine. Headshots instant-kill, but normal hits only take off about a fourth of their health. And if you click wildly, your bolts go everywhere and only hit by luck. The way the crossbow is designed, you should only be clicking every other second. Most of the orc enemies in the demo are the same height, so you shouldn’t have to adjust your aim much to just walk left and right while headshotting them.
I loved the demo and pre-ordered right away. I’m surprised at the criticism on here – the maps become more interesting almost immediately (the third one is awesome in the demo), and there’s lots of fun ways to torture the orcs. It’s like a mix of Dungeon Keeper and Tower Defense.
04/10/2011 at 11:31 Brumisator says:
Sadly, orcs must die is exactlywhat I expected. Loads of fun for 5 minutes, and then an eternity of boring repetition. Even playing through one level is a chore.
Sorry people, will not buy. (I do hope that the full version has better maps that “short corridor with minor variations”, for people who do buy it)
04/10/2011 at 11:56 Dreamhacker says:
Have fun destroying Rage. I’m looking forward to a raging WIT.
04/10/2011 at 12:01 Thermal Ions says:
Installing to take a gander. Syra’s reported clickyness is a bit of a concern though given arthritis issues.
04/10/2011 at 14:09 magnus says:
Having played the demo I found it rather fun and I am now in possesion of a pre-order.
04/10/2011 at 21:37 johnpeat says:
Biggest problem with the demo is that it has zero challenge to it – no danger of death, plenty of money for traps etc. etc.
This is a bit worrying – I like my Tower Defence games to challenge me, not just expect me to show-up for the the slaughter…
04/10/2011 at 23:30 Star Guarded says:
I imagine this won’t be the case with the full game – there’s a difficulty mode called “Nightmare” that you unlock after you beat the regular campaign, and some of the trailer maps look a lot harder.
05/10/2011 at 14:35 johnpeat says:
One of the reasons you make a demo is to SHOW this – we shouldn’t have to “imagine” this
What I want here is a game where strategy counts and where I can repeat levels for greater scores.
What the demo shows is that with zero thought and effort I get max scores on levels on the middle difficulty.
Seems a massive opportunity missed. All this demo is showing-off is their sassy attitude and shiny graphics – and ‘that’ fart joke…
06/10/2011 at 01:08 Star Guarded says:
How often do developers give us pre-release demos that we can be picky about how good they are as demos? I’d rather get a demo of the tutorial levels over nothing at all (which is what we get 99% of the time).
04/10/2011 at 23:37 michal.lewtak says:
It seems like an interesting game similar to Sanctum, but without the nauseating console FOV that rendered it unplayable, unfortunately they only show the basic orcs that mindlessly run toward the goal, and enemies that run slower but can shoot at you. For traps it shows spikes on the floor, wall arrows, tar that slows down enemies and some exploding barrels and basic weaponry. It also only shows three maps, all of them short and linear, which are more tutorials than any actual challenge. After each map you receive a new item, just like in Plants vs. Zombies.
So the demo is too small to formulate an opinion – I’ll still have to torrent this to figure out if it deserves the 11 Euros. I really hope it does, and the moment I see some interesting challenge that’s not just a linear map with thousands of mobs running through it most of the time, I’ll definitely buy it.