Defend Against a Siege Of Monsters in ‘Orcs Must Die: By The Blade,’ Out Now for Meta Quest

Orcs Must Die is one of the most popular and celebrated tower defense-style action games out there and it’s been a fan favorite for years due in large part to its expert blending of third-person action with strategic planning. Now, with Orcs Must Die: By the Blade, the series is officially making the transition into VR for the very first time.

To learn more about the game’s development, we interviewed Luis Daniel Zambrano, Creative Director for Orcs Must Die: By the Blade. He’s also the CCO and Co-Founder of Teravision Games, giving him a unique perspective on the project as a whole.

Luis Daniel Zambrano, CCO and Co-Founder of Tervavision Games: It’s funny because the Orcs Must Die (OMD) games were basically our main inspiration when we created Captain ToonHead Vs The Punks from Outer Space (CTH) for Quest. We love OMD so much that CTH was actually our take on bringing that Tower Defense + Combat mix, which the OMD franchise did so well in PC & traditional consoles, to VR.

When Enrique Fuentes, our CEO and one of my favorite humans, told me that he met the wonderful people at Robot and that they would generously give us the chance to bring the OMD universe to VR, I couldn’t believe the full-circle moment we were experiencing. What a dream and honor to be able to work on an installment of a game that we deeply admire and that inspired us so much.

We used everything we learned from CTH to bring OMD to life. So technically, CTH ended up being our biggest inspiration on what to do, and what to improve, in Orcs Must Die: By The Blade. I still cannot believe it ended up happening like that!

Zambrano: Unknowingly, the design of Orcs Must Die: By The Blade (OMD:BTB) started for us long ago when we were working on CTH. We iterated so much on the action tower defense adaptation for VR with the original OMD games in mind that it was irresponsible not to consider CTH as a foundational design stepping stone for OMD:BTB.

Knowing that we could make a fun action tower defense in the traditional OMD sense for VR, we wanted to take what we achieved with CTH and push it further in terms of player immersion. We consider that feeling immersed in the center of the game you are playing is one of the most important fantasies that VR brings to its players.

So we challenged ourselves with figuring out ways to provide more player agency and stronger acknowledgement of player presence for OMD:BTB. This is where the biggest pivot happened from the core CTH and classic OMD designs. We decided to steer away from having the enemies mostly pursue an objective that is not the player. We wanted to put the player even more in the center of the action. We needed to render the player as the main target and main opposing force against the Orcs.

With that in mind, we dialed up the importance of combat vs. the traps, and we made the enemies focus more on the players than the Rifts. Bold ideas that aimed at making the player feel more present, and the game more immersive overall. It paid off. Once we did that, it started to feel more excitingly VR than ever.

Zambrano: By making the player the center of the orcs' attention, a myriad of new flavors emerged in the design that we think traditional OMD players will enjoy as a new way of experiencing the franchise that they love.

Playing OMD from a first-person perspective in VR, while having the enemies come toward you, will give you a new understanding of the sizes of the orcs. It’s incredibly intimidating to face a huge ogre with your sword. That fear is only topped by the awe you will feel from being surrounded by the beautiful universe that OMD truly is.

Talking about intimidation, our version of OMD boss fights is something that we think players would appreciate. Because of the increased enemy focus on the player, our bosses are built more as they would be in a traditional action-adventure game. So they are big, mean, and players will need to use both their wits and brawn to survive their multiple phases. Everything you learned during the previous levels leading to the fight will be useful when facing the big guys.

And concerning levels, the challenges presented in each of them vary from only defending their corresponding Rifts. Of course, we pay tribute by indulging in the occasional “defend a single point from orcs” classic, but players will quickly find that the situations they need to overcome will wildly range from killing all enemies to figuring out the environmental head-scratcher at hand.

These are only a few examples of a bunch more new aspects that traditional OMD players will discover in OMD:BTB.

Zambrano: Combat was a big one for us. By intensifying the player’s protagonism in OMD, fighting enemies with the weapons at hand became one of the things players will rely on most. So we iterated a lot in finding the right balance between predictability and freedom.

We wanted to keep basic combat simple, so it is easy to pick up and intuitive enough to be able to effectively react to sudden attacks. If you want to hit, you'll hit!

On top of it, we also added some optional depth with enemy-type weaknesses, blocking, parrying, and coup-de-grâce mechanics. Players can progressively master combat if they decide to learn how to time their attacks, swing in the right direction, and use the most convenient weapon for the job.

Combat can be both as quick as you need it to be, and as effective as you take time to harness it. When you pepper your weapon attacks with quick trap placement, environmental hazards, and a gore system with a lot of cartoonish blood and throwable limbs, you can get very creative on how to slay those orcs.

Brawls can become very hectic very fast in the most fun of ways. Especially when you play in co-op with a friend! All of which translates at the end into fast-paced action that jives super well with the OMD franchise.

Zambrano: In our experience, there is no such thing as unconstrained game development, and we strongly believe that creativity thrives when subjected to clear limitations. In the case of Quest, as with all other platforms we have developed during my career, to be honest, optimization was one of the biggest challenges.

For OMD:BTB, minimizing the amount of visible richly-detailed objects forced us to rethink how levels are designed under the classic tower defense paradigm. Our levels cannot be big arenas where players quickly travel far to defend distant fronts from the same battleground. We needed to break line of sight more drastically and keep spaces more constrained to create scenarios as visually appealing as OMD deserves.

That situation encouraged us to fragment the arenas into a series of interconnected rooms. This approach ended up providing the interesting opportunity to change objectives per section within the same level. An exciting revelation for us!

Ultimately, this performance limitation pushed the game toward a map configuration that kept gameplay fresh and varied. We felt that was yet another meaningful evolution of the CTH structure that classic OMD inspired us to pursue.

Zambrano: Towers, or Traps in the context of OMD, are still a super important part of the experience. But in the case of OMD:BTB, player combat is the main tool for orc obliteration. The traps are more of a great complement that makes your fights way more fun.

Freeze your enemies with your ice trinket on top of a spike trap for an extra poke, propel them toward a distant lava pit with a convoluted chain of spring traps, throw severed limbs at suspended orcs that are paralyzed by the gravity trap, or gather foes around an explosive with your decoy trap. It’s your choice to experiment and find your own way of being as mean to orcs as they deserve.

Zambrano: The game consists of 12 levels distributed across 3 stages, each themed as different fortifications. Those fortresses are the main settings of a 3-act journey that tells the story of how Gabriella and Maximilian fought arduously to heal the afflicted Rifts of Stormwreck Island, an ominous land located in the death world where orcs live.

As players progress in this epic adventure, they will unlock access to new weapons, trinkets, and traps; and also accumulate resources to upgrade all of them individually. With each new tool in their arsenal, new creative ways of beating the levels will be enabled, providing new opportunities for finding all their secrets and achieving higher scores.

Zambrano: We think that OMD fans will find the interplay between traps, trinkets, and weapons to be very familiar; especially because of how exceedingly authentic the look and feel of the overall game really is.

We were extremely careful to respect the tone and rules of the OMD franchise. We felt a great deal of responsibility in making sure that this new title is true to the beautifully crafted universe that the super-talented team at Robot, which we admire very much, created with such care and have been expanding for more than a decade.

We especially loved working with the original voices for Max and Gabriella. Witnessing Robert McCollum and Colleen Clinkenbeard elevate our script with their ad-lib suggestions and their flawless rendition of these amazing characters is one of the most impressive things I have personally seen in my career. It was an absolute privilege, as an OMD fan, to have seen them perform their magic in real time while sharing more than a few laughs with me in the process.

The game story I wrote is located shortly after the events of OMD2 and well before OMD3. We hope fans appreciate that we provided another opportunity to play with Max and Gabs in their youth. Personally, this is my favorite moment in their alliance as fellow War Mages, and I still cannot believe we were able to bring this period of their lives back into play.

Zambrano: First, make sure your play area is safe and free from obstacles, you're going to be swinging your arms a lot!

Second, grab a good pair of headphones, savor the outstanding voice acting, and soak in all the love that our talented audio team (led by my actual brother, Daniel Zambrano) poured into this game.

Third, dive deep into the combat: learn the timings and directions of different enemy attacks, master blocking and parrying, and go for those satisfying kills. You'll feel way more powerful when you engage with all the depth that the design team (guided by Cesar Solis Galindo, our Lead Game Designer and proudly my Co-Director on this project) carefully crafted for y'all.

Also, take a moment to stop and appreciate your surroundings while you're exploring. Andres Menza, our Art Director, and his team of incredibly talented artists put so much effort into making everything breathtakingly beautiful. Meanwhile, Hugo Saucedo and his level design team hid a ton of secrets just for you to discover.

There are so many other talented people at Teravision Games who poured their hearts into this. The engineering team, tech artists, animators, UX designers, QA testers, and beyond. I feel bad not being able to name them all here because they truly deserve the recognition. But above all, I have to give a shoutout to Jesus Nieto, our producer, the guy with the hardest job of keeping us all focused while guiding us across the finish line. Jesus, my dude, YOU did it! congrats.

So my final piece of advice (which is really more of a heartfelt request): take a minute to watch the credits and give the team a big clap! All those folks poured years of effort into building this game, which we're immensely proud of. They did it so you could jump back into the magnificent world of OMD and have an absolute blast being terrible toward those poor orcs.