After months in open beta, developer Robot Entertainment is fully launching its latest game for PC.
Orcs Must Die: Unchained is leaving beta and beginning its full commercial release April 19. The game will go live on Steam and its official website with a major update that will introduce a new head-to-head mode called Sabotage. Unchained will remain free-to-play, and it will debut on PlayStation 4 later this year.
Since first debuting in 2016, Orcs Must Die: Unchained has gone through a number of permutations. It started as a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) with tower-defense elements, but Robot eventually abandoned that idea in favor of returning to the core mechanics of the previous Orcs Must Die games.
That fundamental gameplay involves guiding a character around a map to find off waves of orcs using combat and traps. Robot first developed this concept with Orcs Must Die in 2011 and then the sequel in 2012.
But the studio is still planning more content for Unchained. The aforementioned Sabotage mode brings back some of the head-to-head elements that the game lost when Robot shifted away from the MOBA format. Sabotage pits two teams of three players against one another in a multiplayer battle that is somewhat reminiscent of head-to-head Tetris.
In Sabotage, your team of three fights off waves of computer-controlled orcs while your opponents do the same thing on the exact same map. But the things you do in your game can have an effect on the opposition. You can send a spell, minions, or boss characters to screw up the defensive items your enemies so meticulously set up. Of course, the other team can do the same to you. The three-person squad that last the longest wins.
Sabotage likely isn’t the next big genre on Steam, but this is probably exactly what Orcs Must Die fans want from this game.