Hello War Mages,
Kyle here – Game Director on Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap. I’ll be posting a series of deep dives between now and launch into all the different features and content we’re bringing you in Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap. I figured the best place to start is the gameplay loop and the progression systems. Because while OMDD is still about defending Rifts by placing traps and slicing orcs – the journey, rewards, and challenges have gotten far more interesting.
Missions and Distortions
After Vorwick’s defeat in OMD!3, the orc armies splintered into four factions, each led by a different general vying for control. Your goal is to help the Order bring them all down, but the road there is not a traditional linear set of levels.
Each time you set out to defend a Rift in OMDD, you’re offered a different selection of three levels. Each level has a randomized challenge attached to it that we call a Distortion. These Distortions add some flavor to your defensive duties. For instance, one raises the rune coin price of a trap every time one is placed, another makes trolls worth more Rift points, and another prevents you from selling traps entirely (tfw the trap’s half a spot off). There are dozens of Distortions, and you’ll want to consider how each affects your setup. The combination of a level and a Distortion is called a Mission.
Threads
You won’t have to take on the Distortions and hordes of orcs with just pure grit and spike traps though. During the break between each wave, you’ll get to choose a boon that we call a Thread. Threads are choices offered to the War Mages by magical beings known as Weavers that bridge the gap between destiny and free will with Rift magic.
At the end of each wave, three Threads are randomly selected from your collection, and you’ll choose one. Don’t worry – you'll have plenty of time. Waves no longer start until players start them. Threads augment a variety of your War Mage abilities and trap attributes like cooldowns, trap prices and damage, and character stats. And it’s easy to list out how these change your stats, but there are plenty that go beyond that: changing trap sizes, throwing ogres and trolls into the air, and adding homing to your War Mage’s shots. There are over 500 Threads in total.
Rewards and Gambling
So you’ve used your Threads, traps, and skills to overcome the orcs and the Distortion – now what? We judge you. Like in previous games, you’ll be rewarded with Skulls based on your performance during the Mission. You’ll use these skulls to upgrade your traps and War Mages, as well as purchase new traps and Threads back in the Order Fortress.
Veterans will be familiar with a lot of the scoring system, like combos. But we’ve done away with the 5-Skull grading scale. Ironically, for many players, it became binary: you either get five skulls or you fail. And while there are plenty of bonuses for different accomplishments built into your score, the par time requirement is gone as well. All of this allows us a lot more flexibility in the challenges we create and the players a lot more freedom in where and how they defend the Rift. Instead of five skulls, you’ll be seeing numbers more in the dozens or hundreds.
But what if I told you, you could take those skulls and double or triple their value? Sound too good to be true? Well, let me tell you about Gambling.
If you win a Mission, you can take your skulls back to the hub and grab some upgrades; or stake half those skulls and choose another Mission. If you win again, you’ll multiply the staked skulls and win some new ones. You can continue to do this until you are faced with an orc army general or lose.
It’s not as simple as playing another Mission, however. When you Gamble Forward, you carry with you your current number of Rift Points, your Distortions, and the enemies get some health and damage buffs. But you also get to bring your Threads along. Gambling Forward includes some fun new surprises in the levels too, but I’ll get into that another time.
Traps and Trap Upgrades
Win or lose, you’ll get some skulls for playing a Mission. But if you win a Mission, you also get a gold skull. Gold skulls allow you to purchase new traps in the hub. Each trap is one gold skull; so, every victory is a new trap until you’ve collected the whole lot. This means getting new traps is no longer at the expense of leaving your current loadout underpowered.
You can use your pile of skulls to upgrade any of the traps that you own. Instead of the one stat option with three levels in previous games, traps in OMDD each have three stats to upgrade up to five times. With this extra depth, we’re also showing a lot more detail about every trap so you can more easily make decisions. For example, on the spike trap, you can upgrade and see its exact reset time.
Other upgrade options from previous entries like Unique Upgrades are now worked into the Thread system with even more options.
Skills
Trap upgrades aren’t the only way to spend skulls in the hub. You can also chat with Gabriella to fill out your skill tree. The skill tree has four branches. Three of them apply to your entire profile (oh, profiles are back): Strength, Defense, and Traps. Strength contains upgrades for things like primary attack damage and damage to bosses, for Defense it’s hit points and Rift Points lost on death (oh, Rift Points lost on death is back), and the Trap branch affects entire categories of traps like floor trap damage and prices.
The final branch is for each individual War Mage. Here you can upgrade their stats and abilities.
Players can fill out the skill tree in its entirety with enough skulls.
Unlike Threads, upgrades purchased in the hub are permanent. With your skull coffers emptied, it’s time to hop back into a Mission and feel the power of those upgrades.
I’m back next week with more. In the meantime, come join the official Discord - where I reveal more secrets about OMDD than they want me to. And don't forget to wishlist Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap now on our Steam page!
Kyle – Game Director