Monthly Archives: April 2016

Did you catch the new hero reveal from this weeks Insider Access? Our icy friend Tundra is set to make a return to Orcs Must Die! Unchained next patch. A perfect compliment to the new Avalanche survival match also coming next patch, sticking with the ice theme.

Closed beta players who have been playing OMDU during phase 1 of the closed beta may remember Tundra’s earlier appearance. He, like other heroes such as Bloodspike and Temper have been out of the hero select from the game whilst Robot’s designers give them a thorough re-work. Tundra has a number of brand new abilities and this is an example of great things coming to fans who wait! He has some great new kit to help him in battle.

Perhaps the most impressive of his abilities is the “Avalanche” ability which sees Tundra turn into a giant snowball which he can then literally run over to decimate enemy minions. It also doubles up as a great escape option. This new ability is perhaps one of the most different abilities in the game. When in the snowball form, the controls are also adapted to give greater steering control. Tundra can remain in this form for as long as he has mana or until he hits into a wall.

Tundra has an equally impressive unique trap too, the Saw of Arctos. This new trap looks devastating to enemy minions. The trap is long and thin with ice saws which launch at high speed dealing massive damage to minions. The saw is deployed twice, up and down the length of the trap. Another great new trap to add to the OMDU collection. The long and skinny nature of the trap will make players re-think the usual kill box strategies.

Tundra’s passive ability Permafrost sees frozen minions take extra damage. Tundra’s other abilities such as his standard melee attack Glacial Sweep, where Tundra swings his scepter has a chance of freezing enemies. Or he can make use of his Flash Freeze ability to instantly freeze an enemy, no matter what. On his right click Tundra shoots three projectile ice shards with his Icicle Burst ability. This ability is perfect for hitting those opponents escaping.

Another very unique ability that Tundra has to assist his team is his Wall of Frost. This ability lets Tundra place a solid ice wall which can block minions and enemy heroes path. Friendly heroes can still pass through but enemies cannot. This is an interesting ability as it can be used to urgent scenarios like enemies about to enter the rift, or can also be used strategically to redirect the path that minions take down a lane.

Tundra’s impressive new abilities demonstrate the kind of sweeping changes we can expect to see for the remaining heroes that have been taken out of play for re-works. If Tundra is anything to go by the upcoming heroes to be revealed should be as equally as exciting. The avalanche ability is also a great technical accomplishment of additional tech being implemented in the game to support the ability. Expect lots of interesting new things coming up for heroes in the future.

To learn more about Tundra, lead hero designer Paul Hellquist has blogged all about him on OrcsMustDie.com – check out his blog – The Ice Beat Cometh.

Last week, Orcs descended upon London for EGX Rezzed, a video games event hosted at Tobacco Dock. The event had over 160 games playable and one of those was Orcs Must Die! Unchained where the Gameforge team had set up camp. Community Manager SiS and Senior Producer Duthieboy were on-site along with other staff from Gameforge. Having set up an impressive booth with a number of playable stations the booth entertained hundreds of players who came by to play last week.

The entrance to the OMDU booth

The Gameforge team did a great job setting up the booth and players were able to come by and play PvP or Survival. Whilst queuing videos were playing of the awesome OMDU trailer and how to play videos. From what I could see everyone was having a great time and greatly enjoyed the game.

Anyone who came by got a sweet OMDU hat just for stopping by and killin’ some Orcs.

Existing OMDU players were also able to talk with Gameforge staff about the game and get insights into its current development.  Its great to see OMDU at these kind of events. Here are some more pictures from inside the booth:

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Be on the look out for more OMDU events soon!

Just in case you missed out the preview of the new survival map in last weeks Insider Access, below you can view a video tour of the new map. “Avalanche” is a heavily modified version the the Surrounded map. Its alot more than a new look and feel, Avalanche has new rooms, entrances, guardian placement, rift room and more. It really will feel like a whole new map! Coming soon to Orcs Must Die! Unchained open beta!

The Robot Entertainment AMA (ask me anything) series continues on Reddit. The latest bot to take part is Design Director – Ian Fischer, you may better recognise him as “Mother” on the forums. Check out his answers over on his AMA. Plenty of interesting discussion about his industry past and the current state of play with Orcs Must Die! Unchained.

You’ll also want to be on the look out for Jerome Jones tomorrow. He’ll be joining Justin “SixOkay” Korthof on the Insider Access twitch stream at 3PM US Central time to talk about a brand new map coming to OMDU. Be there, or be square!