Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap has been "balanced around four players and turned down for solo"

Anyone who has played an Orcs Must Die! game in the past will be familiar that the series has always had a cooperative element albeit one that has felt significantly easier than the solo experience. This won't be the case in the upcoming Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap.

Speaking with game director Kyle Snyder, he told us how the game has been built so that it supports cooperative action first and foremost and has then been adjusted for the solo players out there.

"You know ironically in the previous games they were designed and focused around single player and then co-op was just there as an option and what that means is co-op is just straight-up easier. There wasn't a lot done to make co-op more challenging and more difficult so you could interpret that as, 'oh this is designed around co-op' without people really knowing that wasn't actually the case.

"So, what we've done here is balanced it around four players, and then turned it down for solo in a lot of different ways. So, not only are there health and damage differences on the enemies, not only do we make sure that these war mages are all playable as solo heroes, but there are other differences too like we have added now... if you played orcs before you didn't always get an unlimited break in between every single wave, right? So, if you're playing solo there was a lot more running around quickly trying to memorise what to do. No longer the case you get as much time to strategise as you need and you can start the wave whenever you want, and we also change the pacing of how the enemies come at you.

"So, if you're playing solo, you know you don't need to be in four places at once in order to get it done because we pace them so that you can move around the map more comfortably as you're slaughtering orcs."

Check out the full interview below to hear about how Unreal Engine 5 allows the team to flex their creative vision for the series and also how traps are now more important than ever.