The Green Mile

The mission to finish ORCS MUST DIE! UNCHAINED before shutdown.

- Jeremy Peel

Orcs Must Die! Unchained is dead. On April 8, Robot Entertainment shut down the servers it once hoped could be home to millions. This had been the studio’s intended opus, the action tower defense hit reimagined as a free-to-play hobby game. It had the backing of Chinese internet giants Tencent, just like League of Legends and Fortnite. But in the end, it didn’t have enough players to cover its server fees.

It’s a genuine tragedy, a cautionary tale about what happens when live games don’t get the air they need, but it’s not the one I’m telling today. Instead, this is the story of Orcs Must Die! Unchained’s last weekend, and a doomed mission to play the whole thing.

As we begin, it’s Saturday afternoon. The lights won’t go out until 4 pm on Monday. Robot announced the closure three months ago, and I’d resolved to play through the entire game in co-op with a friend before that happened. But, to misquote Dr. Ian Malcolm, life, uh, gets in the way. Two job changes and one relocation later, here we are, with just a couple of days and 36 maps yet to master.

50 HOURS TIL SHUTDOWN

Every Orcs Must Die! the level is bordered by entrance points, which the orcs pour through, and centered around a portal, which must be guarded at all costs. The routes from those gateways to that rift are your canvas—corridors in which to create elaborate kill boxes made up of floor spikes, arrow walls, pounders, grinders, and swinging maces. Who said orcs couldn’t be tender?

For Orcs Must Die! enthusiasts, it’s customary to ‘five star’ a map before moving onto the next— achieving the highest possible rating by not letting a single orc pass into that portal, no matter how fast or how big they are.