Skip to main content

Orcs Must Die! Unchained refocuses on classic PvE

Nice

Orcs Must Die! Unchained [official site] has launched a huge update taking the tower defense closer to its roots. The unpopular PvP mode is gone, for starters, which devs Robot Entertainment say is so they can "fully focus on bringing back the classic Orcs Must Die gameplay that players thought was missing in OMD!U". Smashing! I enjoyed the earlier games, with their mix of building wacky traps and roaming around on foot fighting monsters myself, but didn't dig what Unchained was up to.

The PvP 'Siege' mode not only divided development efforts but actively put new players off, Robot Entertainment explained in September:

"Despite tremendous efforts, Siege PvP mode just hasn't worked out. As we've gone through various iterations on the game mode, we've ultimately seen only a small portion of our players actively playing Siege. More importantly, people who play Siege matches are less likely to continue playing the game at all after their match."

Oof!

"Our focus will now turn entirely toward making Survival feel, look, sound, and play more like a clear evolution of OMD and OMD2," they said. And that's what they've done.

The open beta's Update 1.6 launched last week with loads of new maps, a new prologue, new traps, new traits, new enemies, new bosses, heaps of fighty tweaks and rebalancing, crafting changes, and, excitingly, reworked trap physics which should cause more silly deaths.

"For example, physics traps no longer deal damage initially. Instead, they now deal damage when the minion hits a surface after flying through the air. This makes it much more likely for comedic collisions and elaborate deaths to occur."

Always important to consider wacky deaths. Check out update 1.6's patch notes for full details on everything.

Orcs Must Die! Unchained is free-to-play on Steam or through publisher GameForge's client.

Read this next