There’s potential for Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap to improve, but as it stands, the game feels lacking—especially when compared to previous entries in the Orcs Must Die! series. While I’ll likely put a few more hours into it due to my friend group’s interest, I have no real drive to experience this content solo. The reason is simple: the game just doesn’t have enough substance.

On paper, the variety of traps and heroes is a strong foundation, but the actual levels and bosses feel so uninspired that the experience has no lasting impact. The game only has 11 levels, one of which is a coliseum that feels completely devoid of creative design. These levels are repeated constantly, not by choice but by necessity, as the game’s structure forces players to cycle through them at random. In contrast to earlier titles, where handcrafted maps and escalating enemy waves kept things engaging, Deathtrap falls flat with its rigid six-wave structure, where encounters rarely feel distinct. The same enemies that pose a problem early on remain an issue throughout, leading to repetitive and predictable gameplay.

Another major flaw is the pacing. Each run requires chaining multiple stages together, with six waves per level, culminating in a boss fight. This process takes a minimum of an hour—even when playing efficiently. Instead of feeling like an intense battle of strategy and adaptation, the game becomes a slog, recycling similar challenges without meaningful variation. The only real difference comes from how players approach the game—selecting different heroes and placing traps in various ways. However, once higher difficulties are introduced, optimal strategies become mandatory, reducing creativity and forcing players into a rigid meta.

Speaking of difficulty, Deathtrap employs one of the laziest scaling methods possible: a flat multiplier to enemy health and damage. It’s as uninspired as it sounds, offering no real challenge beyond artificially extending fights. My friends and I pushed through to defeat the four bosses, but once we had, no one felt compelled to keep going. That’s a clear sign that the game lacks meaningful progression—no one wanted to “make the number go up” because the grind wasn’t rewarding.

The game’s meta-progression only reinforces this issue. Players earn resources over time, which are used to make heroes stronger and traps more efficient. However, these upgrades don’t provide new tactical opportunities or interesting choices—they’re just necessary to progress through higher difficulty tiers. Instead of feeling like a rewarding power curve, it feels like a mandatory grind with little excitement.

I wouldn’t call Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap a bad game, but there are far better options within the developer’s catalog. While the potential for improvement exists, the core gameplay loop simply isn’t appealing to me. I don’t want to spend an hour or more per run just to experience the same repetitive six-wave structure over and over again.

I can't recommend this to anyone sadly. The game crashes too much, the graphics are so bright they hurt my eyes after only about 5 minutes of gameplay, and they're trying to do this hero shooter thing that ALREADY FAILED with OMD! Unchained

I think they got something here. I thought I would be done with Deathtrap after beating the four bosses. I have over doubled the playtime since. Once the first couple patches came up and barricades got rebalanced, I’ve been having a blast solo.

It’s the OMD you know and love, but now a Rougelite. You start a run by picking one of three maps, each with its own debuff that will carry forward, and once you beat it you continue the process. As difficulty ramps up, so do the challenges you face. Maybe you can live with Orcs doing 50% more damage, or sometimes turning into Skeletons on death, but only the map would actively choose to have Goblin Sappers on Every Round! It’s a loop I really dig, it’s like digging your own grave.

The War Mages this time are fun to mess around with. You got a good variation: A new duo of War Mage and Sorceress, two variations of melee, Harlow who is more like Max in 2, and also Mac is there I guess! It took me a little bit to warm up to them, but I think they make for a good mix. The melee might feel strange in the lobby, since your character stops moving, but that’s because they home in on enemies (and thus remain standstill when none are around). If none of these are to your taste though, there might be an old friend hiding in the lobby.

The game still needs a bit of fixing. There are some minor bugs and graphical hiccups that I don’t think should be a priority, but one time the Orcs did decide that they had enough of my barricade shenanigans and just… chose to walk through them? This happened on the museum map, and only once in 50 hours. I haven’t been able to reproduce it, but if you see in the preview that the ghosts all commingle on one spot they shouldn’t… try to cover it up?

There is also one comment I’ve seen a lot: More maps. The maps are really nice, but you will replay them a lot. Some switch up the location of the Rift (thing you want to protect) which is nice, but if you want the optimal debuffs you might play the same map three times in a run. They are working on more, but it will most likely be a bit? An idea could be to make more smaller maps, similar to larger maps in the older games, but that could go against what they’re aiming for.

Ultimately, I think I love this game? I’m happy they are willing to experiment with OMD. Unchained was a cool idea too! But this is more my speed. I want to see this game continue to grow.

Psst. Robot. If I can be super greedy: Just throw some Unchained in there. Like Stinkeye, or Deadeye, or someone with both their eyes. I know it doesn’t make sense. No one will mind!