Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap shows off a January release date and details its roguelite facelift

The fourth entry in the Orcs Must Die series just got a January 28 release date at today's PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted, with a suitably silly trailer that elaborates on some of the new features on offer.

Since Orcs Must Die first lit up the Steam charts in 2011, the series has remained the Platonic ideal of inebriation-friendly 4-player co-op—dress up a maze with spike traps and turrets, arm yourself with a slew of magic artifacts and blunderbusses, and defend your base from a horde of orcs alongside a few friends to blame when things go south. But if you’ve ever felt that, like a lot of horde shooters, Orcs Must Die's defense can get a little repetitive, you’re in luck: Deathtrap’s newest trailer dives into a few roguelite-inspired shakeups and a brand new cast of playable heroes.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap - Horde shooter gameplay, with multiple characters running and gunning Orcs. — (Image credit: Robot Entertainment)

While previous entries had linear campaigns with static levels, Deathtrap has a hub from which you can select one of a few missions, each of which boast modifiers that might shift based on weather, time of day, and "rift distortions," which toss a layer of randomized challenge into the mix.

And while Orcs Must Die 3 took the playable character count up to 6, they weren’t hugely different from one another aside from some stat tweaks and one active ability. The warmages on offer in Deathtrap seem to vary a bit more in playstyle, toting exclusive spells, weapons, traps, and what appeared to be a summonable dragon.

You can upgrade your heroes in-between missions, and with all the distortions and hero buffs stacking against each other as a run progresses, things are sure to get hectic and variable in ways they never could in past games.

Mark your calendar for the precise date when those orcs must, in fact, die; in the meantime, you can wishlist the game on Steam.

Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...