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Orcs Must Die! Unchained and Hero Academy shutting down April
Free-to-play defend-o-shooter Orcs Must Die! Unchained and both games in Robot Entertainment's turn-based Hero Academy series are set to close their doors this April. In an apologetic letter to players, CEO Patrick Hudson explains that the games simply cost more to run than they make back in return. The studio itself doesn't seem to be in immediate danger, with Robot currently working on two new games…
Feature: Listen now or fall behind
Podcast: The Electronic Wireless Show talks Caveblazers, The Witcher 3, and Orcs Must Die
Jingle jingle, it's the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week we discuss the ongoing Steam summer sale and bare our respective piles of shame. Editor-at-arms Graham also joins us to talk about spelunking roguelike Caveblazers, while Pip takes on the free-to-play Orcs Must Die! Unchained and Brendan marches on with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. But wait! There's also an interview with the…
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…
Feature: Double competitive tower defence
I'm glaring at the Orcs Must Die! Unchained deck-building screen trying to work out which combination of minions, equipment and traps will be the most lethal. It's the latest outing in the Orcs Must Die! series and has dropped the campaign mode in favour of expanding the co-operative element introduced in Orcs Must Die 2. You're now playing competitive aggressive tower defence with four teammates…
Microsoft may be claiming that it's redoubled its efforts on PC, but it hasn't had much to show for it yet, Games For Windows Live is dying at an agonizing pace, and now Age of Empires Online is naught but ash and memories. Servers are now offline, never to be seen again. It's a shame because AOEO had potential despite a litany of flaws, and…
I feel like life has dealt orcs a pretty unfair hand. I'm not just referring to the insidious, discriminatory presumption that they must be villains of the lowest caliber, either. It's all "musts" with the poor green giants. Orcs must fight, orcs must die, orcs must be back from the school dance by 11 or so help me they are grounded from here to kingdom…
According to the folklore of our culture - relayed by minstrels sweetly crooning out their dulcet tones in the backs of taverns and also, like, every Hollywood movie ever - heroes always arrive just in the nick of time. So it shouldn't be a problem for an academy's worth of medieval-themed do-gooders, right? You'd think so, but then Hero Academy's planned release date of August…
Feature: Oh No More Orcs
Perhaps the pack-leader of the recent 'do x to fantasy/sci-fi staple y' game name trend, Robot Entertainment's Orcs Must Die was a giddy, gory carnival of greenskin slaughter in a tower defence meets Diablo kind of way. A mere nine months later, we get the sequel. Can such cheekiness be justified? You have two ways of potentially finding out before you buy it. A) play…
This is the most splendid of news. If you don't know Hero Academy, it's a turn-based, two-player tactical game from the chaps behind Orcs Must Die and if you are now wondering why you haven't heard of it, it's because it's an iOS game. Except on August 8th it'll also be a PC game, as it's coming to Steam and allowing cross-platform play. Opponents are…
A trench-coat-clad detective emerges from a thick late night fog. He spots his partner - a smaller, more plainly dressed man - standing near a small bridge between two rocky cliffs. And also a pile of dead orc bodies. "What was the official time of death?" the detective asks grimly, not even bothering to greet his protege. "Midnight or somewhere thereabouts. July 30," the young…
After Orcs Must Die made an oh-so-straightforward name for itself with a multiplatform release, it was bit odd - though certainly not unappreciated - to see the second of its orc-slaying lineage go PC-only. But then I began to imagine the possibilities afforded by legally binding, exploding-collar-enforced commitment to our benevolent platform of choice. Custom levels, all sorts of off-the-wall player created traps, genre-twisting overhauls…
Orcs Must Die, Shoot Many Robots, Kill All Zombies... A trend emerges, and I'm not entirely sure I'm down with so many prosaic game titles. Especially when they're all so violent. Can't we have Hug Many Cats, Cake Must Be Eaten, Visit All Museums? Until then, we shall make do with Orcs Must Die! 2, which will slaughter its way towards our PCs' hard drives…
To all things, DLC. It's the law. The law of slightly tiring microtransactions. This law includes Robot Entertainment's impressively ridiculous Orcs Must Die, which is due two globs of DLC in the not too distant. The first of these is Artifacts of power, which launches for $2.49 next Tuesday. I could describe them to you, but I have a headache and need a lie down/hug,…
Feature: And their gnolls and ogres and kobolds too
Orcs Must Die is the first game from Robot Entertainment, the studio raised from the ashes of Age of Empires dev Ensemble, and it was released on PC (via Steam) yesterday. It is a tale of many, many, many Orcs, and of their very, very, very regular deaths. And this? This is what I think of it.
Feature: A nice cup of tea and a sit down won't help
It is true. They must die. They cannot do anything else, except for make me die. I am, of course, not about to let that happen. Not while I have a fine selection of spike traps, tar traps, arrow traps, crossbows, spears and wind-summoning belts at my disposal. I am so sorry, orcs, but you must indeed die. Don't try and talk me out of…
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…
Robot Entertainment seem to realise that if they’re going to tell us that Orcs Must Die, they damn well better give us plenty of ways to make that happen. They could have gone a different route and cast the player as the orcs pipe-smoking bowler-hatted defendant. Press the left mouse button to say, “Must they though, gentlemen of the court? Must they really?” Instead, they’ve…
Orcs are having a hard time these days. Persecuted everywhere they go and thrown into games and films as the epitome of evil. They just can't catch a break - they are the poor victims of a McCarthyesque witch hunt. Also, they must die. Robot Entertainment says so. Dan Gril went and had a look at Orcs Must Die earlier this year and found it…
Great as it is, Sanctum isn't going to be the only action tower defense title that we'll be gifted with this year. Orcs Must Die is arriving this summer, and is looking like a neat counterpart- dark and dingy where Sanctum was bright and shiny, and slapstick where Sanctum was all business. Our Dan Griliopolous made it sound fun enough in his preview, too, and…
You can read about Robot Entertainment's new game, Orcs Must Die, in the feature below. Then, with these thoughts in mind, cast your laser-like gaze on the seventy three seconds of footage that we've got hidden somewhere in this post.
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