Orcs Must Die!

Every now and then, I'll spot a game on Steam that catches my attention for some reason or another. When I saw the title of Orcs Must Die!, I had a feeling that this was my kind of game, so I downloaded the demo and sure enough, I liked what I saw well enough that I pre-ordered the full. Just last night, I finished the first play-through, but I'm definitely not done with this fun and funny game.

The basic premise is this: the player is an apprentice warmage, one charged with protecting magical rifts from wave after wave of invading orcs, kobolds, ogres, and so on. You have a few special magical talismans that shoot fire or ice or electricity. You also are given a wide variety of traps and helpers to defend the rift(s). There are arrows that shoot out of the wall, giant springboards that can toss the orcs through the air, or swinging pendulums that . . . well, the less said about those the better.

This is basically a tower defense game with wall and floor traps. There isn't much of a plot, but what little is there is funny and engaging.

Like I said, I finished the game, switching from the medium difficulty to the easiest. Now I'm going back to try to get perfect scores on each of the levels. Doing so gives me "skulls," which I can spend to make the traps more deadly. And then there's the "nightmare" mode. I'm actually kind of looking forward to that one.

So if you have a few bucks sitting around, this one is definitely a keeper. Have fun (stopping them from) storming the castle!