Orcs Must Die! 2

Orcs Must Die! 2 picks up days after the first game ends — rifts closed, magical Order destroyed, and the orc horde once again climbing toward whatever's left. The War Mage returns as the headstrong front-line character, joined this time by the Sorceress, an ex-War Mage with mind-control magic who plays as the more strategic counterpart. The two are explicitly designed to support each other in the headline new feature: full two-player co-op campaign.

The mix is the genre's familiar one — first-person action, top-down placement, traps and weapons working in concert. Over fifty defenses ship in the box, blending new arrivals with classic Orcs Must Die! favorites and the new category of magical trinkets. The 225-plus persistent upgrade system lets you specialize a build over time, with each playthrough unlocking better versions of the traps and spells you actually use.

Over twenty new enemy types fill in the gaps — Earth Elementals, Trolls, Bile Bats — alongside returning enemies from the original. A new story campaign carries the narrative forward and is fully playable in co-op, while Endless Mode loops increasingly punishing waves for as long as the team can hold the choke. Owners of the first game on Steam unlock co-op versions of ten classic levels with new enemies layered in.

A Nightmare difficulty and a skull-ranking system run across every mode for replayability, and leaderboards keep score for both solo and co-op runs. The whole package is the comfortable second-album version of a system that already worked — more enemies, more traps, more synergies, more friends allowed on the screen.