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Genre: Arcade/Strategy

Format: Download

Developer: MrJoy

Publisher: Freeverse

System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.3.9, 1.83GHz PowerPC or Intel processor, 384MB RAM, Intel GMA950 or better video card, 35MB hard drive space

Review Computer: 2GHz 20" Intel Core Duo iMac, 1GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon X1600

Network Feature: No

Processor Compatibility: Universal

Price: $24.95

ESRB Rating: N/A

Availability: Out now

Demo: Download full demo (35.6MB)

Okay, so my sources tell me there's a new trend in video games that's quite popular online. It must've started by some high school math teacher or student, who one day decided that rather than worrying about identifying Y so we could understand exactly how X got from A to B, we should instead worry about arming Y to prevent X from getting from A to B. I wholeheartedly support this. Math class would've been much useful to me if I'd been able to protect my GPA with a few Ice Towers and Fog Spells...which is how I got through government, by the way.

The developers at MrJoy apparently got more out of senior math than I did, as they've now presented us with Hordes of Orcs. Here, A is "The Glowing Portal of Really Bad Things That We Should Have Bricked-Up a Long Time Ago" and B is your village. Y is an assortment of defense towers, walls and spells, and X is...well...a horde of orcs. That's something to consider, by the way. Never, perhaps, has a game so perfectly lived up to its title. Hordes of Orcs really does contain hordes of orcs, and you probably won't fully understand the definition of "hordes" until its represented by orcs that you must kill.

It works like this. You start each level with some money and some defense units. Mostly, you need to worry about placing walls, as the orcs can't run through or over them. You use the walls to direct their movement, slowing them down and forcing them within range of the towers you erect, at which point they automatically launch the attacks against the orcs. Killing orcs gives you money, which you then spend on more walls and more towers. Make sense? Good.

Now, some towers are more effective than others against the various types of orcs. The fire tower is ineffective against red orcs, arrow towers are pretty much ineffective against everyone (but they're very cheap, so you can compensate for that in numbers), and so on. And if a tower is seemingly ineffective, you can choose to sell them and construct a different tower, or spend your money upgrading them to increase their range and attack power. You can click on orcs to get their vital stats and special properties, which will help you determine what towers to build where. Ineffective planning will quickly domino into a loss; if you can't kill the orcs with the towers you've built, you can't get enough money to build the towers you need. It's the orcish version of needing a job to make the money to buy the car you need to drive to your job.

To help you strategize, Hordes of Orcs displays the upcoming waves so you'll know how many orcs of which type you'll need to kill (like knowing which pattern is next to fall in Tetris). Depending upon how the level's going for you, this will either be a mundane exercise of pointing and clicking, or a frantic mess of action as you try to compensate for bad strategy. If you can control the orcs early, in other words, things will unfold well for you. But if the orcs start to get past your defenses, gaining control of them is very difficult. Thankfully, you've got two things going for you. First, 20 orcs have to get past in order for your village to be destroyed. Second, you've got four spells you can cast in an effort to slow them down: Teleport sends the selected orc back to the start, Fog slows all of the orcs down for a bit, Bait gives them something more interesting to eat than your villagers, and Weaken makes them more susceptible to your attacks. You need mana to cast these spells, so you'll need to save them up for emergencies. Some of these spells are difficult to cast, too. I had no problem with Fog, but no matter what I did at what point in the game, I was never able to successfully use the Teleport spell. It's possible I was doing it incorrectly, sure, but then we'll blame my troubles on the instructions.

Things get more frantic and difficult as the game progresses, but it's still just the same thing level after level. This is why MrJoy built in additional game types: Crossroads (two portals of orcs, not one), Capture the Flag (prevent the orcs from stealing the treasure), Maze Defense (various challenges where the focus is solely on building towers, not on building walls), Gem Drop (treasure falls from sky—don't let the orcs steal it) and Pachinko (where will they start, where will they go, and how will you stop them). These games will heavily test your ability to strategize, but don't deviate so far from the basic gameplay that they create a completely fresh approach. This begs the question; is there anything in here to make it worth purchasing when there are so many free versions of tower defense games online.

That kind of depends. The graphics and audio are much better than anything I've seen online (especially the music, which gets repetitive but adds just the right amount of intensity), and the spells and multiple game styles do require extra strategy beyond basic tower construction. This will make things interesting for a longer period, but the point of online Flash games is that they don't have to be interesting for a long period...just enough to keep you entertained until your boss gets back from lunch.

Now, if Hordes of Orcs had something like multiplayer, that would make it work it. Build your walls not only to keep the orcs out of your portal, but to direct them to your opponents' portal, for example. Or be able to blow up your opponents' towers. Now that would be fun. Instead, we get a very well made game with some decent features, but one that may not justify the $25 price tag to anyone other than dedicated tower defense enthusiasts.

Well, them and anyone looking for a way to make algebra a bit more explosive.

Oh, and special mention must be made of the trailer. You have to check this thing out. As I told Colin at Freeverse when he first showed it to me, "I guess this is what you get during a writers' strike."