Back in July of 2020, Robot Entertainment’s Orcs Must Die! series released its most recent incarnation Orcs Must Die 3! onto Google Stadia as a timed exclusive. Ever since then, fans of the series without a Stadia subscription have been clamoring for the game’s inevitable release on other platforms, and on July 23, 2021 they will be getting their wish and then some. The game will be releasing with not only all of the content from the initial release but also new traps and a brand-new game mode called Scramble. Screen Rant was able to preview this new content with the help of Design Director at Robot Entertainment Jerome Jones, to get both first impressions of the new mode and some insight into the design process.
The goal of the Scramble mode is that the players are trying to beat five tiers of maps from the main game without losing all 100 of their starting Rift Points. This otherwise standard challenge is complicated by the buffs and debuffs that accumulate with each tier played through. For every tier, there is a choice between two random campaign maps with each having a randomly assigned debuff associated with them. These debuffs can be anywhere on the spectrum from completely unnoticeable to debilitating and so must be chosen carefully. Only after beating a map do the players get the chance to choose one of three powerful buffs for themselves. The synergies that can be created, both on the negative and positive side of this equation, are what create the replayability and challenge for this game mode.
However, there is a rub as, at its core, Scramble is essentially the roguelite mode for Orcs Must Die! 3, and, as that would imply, if the players lose for any reason, they have to start all over again from tier one. The professed purpose of Scramble, according to Jones, was to get players to try things out of their comfort zone. The buffs and debuffs were the design team’s way of incentivizing or nullifying certain kinds of play and thus allowing for the players to adopt a more dynamic playstyle. For example, a player might enjoy using traps and weapons that do fire damage and so they end up avoiding much of the equipment at their disposal. But if during a run of Scramble, fire damage were to no longer be able to affect any enemies then such a player would have to adapt to survive, and in so doing they might discover things they had been inadvertently missing out on.
When playing Scramble, these design choices definitely come through in the gameplay. It helps that the detrimental effects of the debuffs are immediately apparent thanks to the game starting players off on the back foot by providing only its negative effects for the first tier of play. The same thing can be said of the buffs. Even if they are always outnumbered by their inverse counterparts, the buffs are never overlooked due to their effects being so consistently beneficial. It’s very easy to see how experimenting with different combinations of both of these mechanics would offer plenty of replayability. While doing so was not part of the preview, playing a Scramble run solo was mentioned as being an option, and would doubtlessly be a considerable additional challenge.
There wasn’t very much that could be said to be disappointing with Scramble mode. It was clear that an effort was made to balance the game as best the studio could. One of the few criticisms to be had was that some of the buffs and debuffs - especially the latter - seemed wildly skewed in power level. The biggest example during the preview was seeing that a debuff which added a boss to every single enemy wave was considered a first tier debuff while brittle barricades was considered second tier. Also, while not necessarily an issue, one point of possible improvement to the mode might be to include a third scenario choice for each tier, as it would make for more strategic choices instead of ones focused on wanting to avoid a specific map or debuff.
Scrambling with Jerome Jones was an incredibly fun and enlightening experience. The chaotic gameplay created by the combined buff and debuff systems felt right at home in the Orcs Must Die! series. It is quite clear that Orcs Must Die! 3 is even better this time around than it was when it launched on Stadia, and anyone interested by the initial release's premise will find even more to enjoy in Orcs Must Die! 3.
Orcs Must Die! 3 releases on July 23, 2021 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5(via backwards compatibility), Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S. and PC. Screen Rant was provided access to a preview build and a private play session for the purpose of this article.
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/3AVSI74
0 Comments