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This weeks spotlight on features RoyalFino. Royal is very active on the early access forums over at OrcsMustDie.com and often makes suggestions for the developers.  So lets find out a little more about RoyalFino!

The Basics

Name: Joe

Questions

• When you’re not busy playing OMDU Alpha, what is your day job?

I work temp jobs when I can get them. Looking for a career currently.

• Is there any particular film you are most looking forward to this year?

2015 is going to be way better but probably X-men off the top of my head. Godzilla comes to mind as well. Maybe that Michael Bay movie that involves Turtles from space or whatever.

• Favourite music?

Film Soundtracks.

• Outside the gaming world – what are your hobbies?

Football (American/NFL) fan. I love surfing Reddit and learning new things from it. It’s a great source of information and given the internet is really like a 21st century library, Reddit is a nice road map for it. I also like looking at pictures of cats. Reddit is great for that.

• Aside from OMD, what other games do you enjoy playing?

Half-Life, Portal, Counter-Strike, Sim City and Age of Empires come to mind. Those are some of my most favourite games ever and those type of games are the ones I usually enjoy. OMD was my first venture into the tower defence genre and while I played others and enjoyed them, OMD is the king. If somebody asked me for my top 5 favourite game franchises, Orcs Must Die would be there. I’m really surprised how much I fell in love with the game given I had no expectations for it when it was released in October of 2011.

• How did you discover OMD?

One of my friends let me try it and I got hooked. I ended up playing it for hours till I beat it. I ended up paying it forward and introducing many others to the game as well. I felt like my eyes were opened to a completely new genre of games I can enjoy.

• Whats the best thing about Unchained?

It’s more Orcs Must Die and it introduces a new take on the franchise.

• Do you consider yourself to be more defensive or more offence in Unchained?

Defensive. I like it when the enemy comes to me. I was like that when playing Age of Empires too.

• Have you met your nemesis on the battlefield? Who stands out to you?

Those fire girls that shoot fire are a pain in the ass. As Smolder, who I mostly play as, it’s hard to kill them.

• Deck building is coming soon, what are the cards that are certain to be in your decks?

Tar. Zappers. Arrow Walls.

Shout Out

• Is there anything you would like to say to all the OMD fans out there right now?

Give the game a chance to win you over if you haven’t already. It’s great fun.

 

Check out the official Orcs Must Die Subreddit at www.reddit.com/r/OrcsMustDie as I am the Admin there currently and want to help grow that community to keep all the Redditors that love killing orcs connected and informed about the games, the community hot spots such as robotentertainmentfans.com and the all upcoming community events. I’d appreciate it if any Orcs Must Die fans who visit Reddit subscribe to the Orcs Must Die subreddit as it will hope grow that community.

Thanks for taking part Joe!

A new patch has been uploaded today for Unchained alpha testers. This patch introduces a key OMDU feature – deck building! This is no doubt something that the early-access community has been excited about for some time. Players can now build their own custom decks to take into battle. Players can create decks based on traps, minions, glyphs and weavers. It looks like this:

(Click to enlarge)

Even in its first alpha released form the deck builder is very simple and easy to use. Players just click on the cards they want to use and they are added to the deck which can be seen towards the top of the screen. Players can mix and match between the Order and the Unchained when it comes to minions with plenty of diverse choices available. Captions for minions are complete with OMD humour!

(Click to enlarge)

The deck building system allows players to have a number of pre-set decks so that players can choose the deck they want to take into battle at the character selection screen. The system is looking brilliant so far and will only get better as development progresses. We’ll be taking a look at some of these cards in the coming weeks here on REF.

In the meanwhile to get a glimpse of the deck builder in action be sure to check out the community twitch stream tonight at 7PM CT (convert your timezone) over at http://www.twitch.tv/orcsmustdie. Nananea and SixOkay will be on hand to demonstrate the system and answer questions in the Twitch chat. See you there!

Its Tuesday! This can only mean one thing – yep, its time for another official OMDU stream from Robot Entertainment. Following on from War Mage and Sorceress, today’s stream will feature the first of the brand new characters playable in Unchained – Hogarth!

Be sure to tune in at 2PM CT / 7PM GMT at http://www.twitch.tv/orcsmustdie. As always the stream will be re-playable afterwards and there will be a character summary right here on REF!

If you’re a reddit user be sure to check out the Orcs Must Die! reddit page! The page is updated by the OMD community and RoyalFino is currently one of the admins supporting the page. The reddit is a great resource for finding OMD content and promoting interesting content.

The reddit can be found at:

http://www.reddit.com/r/OrcsMustDie/

Be sure to subscribe!

Following on with our “Spotlight on” feature, last week we interviewed community streamer Nananea. This week we do the same for someone who is very active on the early access forums suggesting and sharing ideas with other fans and can often be found in-game. So lets find out a little more about Blaster!

The Basics

Name: Marshall “Blaster”

Questions

• When you’re not enjoying the OMDU Alpha – what other games do you enjoy playing?

Crusader Kings II, Counter Strike: Source, Mount and Blade, Civilization V, obviously OMD:2.

• Favourite fast food restaurant? 

Taco Bell maybe? I’m still pretty upset that they haven’t brought in a new Chihuahua. Maybe the fish market down the street from my house?

• Favourite music? 

Old country, David Bowie, T-Rex, and that quack like a duck song on youtube.

• If you could pick anywhere in the world to go on holiday, where would you go and why?

Probably somewhere else in southeast Georgia because it’s generally preferable to where the rest of you all live.

• What do you do in your day job?

The NSA pays me to monitor the OMD:U Community.

• How did you find out about Orcs Must Die! ? 

Pretty boring story I guess. I saw where a few of my friends were playing the first game on Steam, bought it during the summer sale, and got super hooked. Now I’m looking forward to bringing those folks into Unchained to whoop the rest of you.

• Whats the thing you like most about OMDU right now?

I really like being part of the development and watching the game grow. No one really has it all figured out yet so there’s a ton of cool experimentation and adapting to the new additions.

• If there is was one main thing you would like to see changed in OMDU what would it be?

I know it would involve massive balancing work and modifications to all of the levels but I really would like to see the fliers get put back in. It isn’t just nostalgia for the old titles; I really think the strategy around deciding how to balance the guys you send out and the traps you pick would be deepened as a result. It would also put more importance on picking a good mix of heros for your team.

• Whos your favourite OMDU character and why? 

I’m mostly playing Hogarth even though I still really want to play the War Mage too once I figure out the new kill boxes well enough to take advantage of the trap discount. It might not be the flashiest thing in Unchained right now but there really isn’t anything much more versatile than being able to throw down a stun. Hogarth is probably aesthetically the funniest character to me as well.

• When can we catch you playing OMDU?

I’ve had to take a slow couple of weeks for finals but I pretty much make every one of the night time sessions I can. I plan on starting a regular live stream in a few weeks too but haven’t quite gotten it quite organized yet.

Shout out

• Is there anything you would like to say to all the OMD fans out there right now?

If you see me in your game lobby, go ahead and plan on not picking Hogarth because I’m calling him now. Also, if you’re not in the alpha and you’re sceptical about this game not being a simple OMD:3 game, try to be patient and optimistic. I’ve never actively played a MOBA in my life but this feels completely natural to me as an OMD player and its already way more playable than you’d expect at this stage of development.

Thanks for your time Blaster! We look forward to checking out your streams once you get set up!

If you didn’t catch this weeks official OMDU stream you would have missed out on the game-play video stream of the Sorceress. She is the other hero alongside the War Mage who has been previously playable in OMD games which means all future streams will feature the brand new characters. Exciting stuff. If you missed out on the stream you can catch the replay right here:

http://www.twitch.tv/OrcsMustDie

So what did we learn about the Sorceress in OMDU? Well largely she retains the same gameplay style for her primary attack as in OMD2 with her rapid fire magical bolt from her staff. Her secondary weapon allows her to mesmerize enemy minions around her so that they stop moving or attacking, at least, until the minions take damage, then the mesmerization is broken. She also enjoys a very useful passive ability which means that enemy minions won’t attack her unless she attacks first. This is useful when she navigates across the level.

The Sorceress has two other abilities, one is teleportation which allows her to teleport backwards slightly should she find herself in a tricky position. Her second ability activates all traps in front of her regardless of whether they are enemy or friendly and regardless of any cool down state they may be in. The only point to note that when she uses this ability the traps will have a longer than usual cool down time afterwards. Oh and when she uses this ability she is also invincible for a short time which is certainly a nifty bonus allowing her to pass through safely.

She also almost had a costume face lift, below we can see one of the concepts by artist Bart Tiongson, however in game at the moment she retains a very similar look as she had in OMD2 and retains her purple get up.

Overall the Sorceress plays pretty much as you might expect considering her play style in OMD2. Her main abilities come from controlling minions and traps by means of mesmerize and setting off traps. She is a ranged character with her staff and she can be played equally well on offence or on defence however her abilities make her most effective when near traps or minions.

Following on from the War Mage the next official OMDU stream from Robot Entertainment lets the Sorceress take centre stage. The stream taking place tomorrow at 2PM ET (convert to your timezone) will show us some of the unique skills the Sorceress has to offer for Unchained. You’ll have to watch to find out – but if you miss out don’t worry, REF will be hear for the post stream summary plus all streams are re-playable on the Orcs Must Die twitch page.

Speaking of streams – did you catch Juicebags stream earlier today? It was a whole lot of fun. Be sure to catch the replay of that which will be available on Juicebags YouTube channel shortly.