Orcs Must Die! gets XBLA and PC release date

Orcs Must Die! will be out on October 5 for XBLA and October 12 on Steam and other electronic distribution platforms. The game is a blend of tower defense and third-person action, similar to Double Fine's mech-assault game Trenched, where you take the role of a powerful soldier in the battlefield, deploying defenses and fighting at the same time. Orcs Must Die!, however, is in a brightly colored medieval fortress — tower defense that's, logically enough, in a tower.

Developer Robot Entertainment has also put out an interactive trailer that lets you select strategies to defeat five waves of Orcish hordes and view the results. For example, you'll choose between hiring more archers or purchasing spike traps and if you choose correctly the battle will go well. It's pretty easy, but the full game will have a campaign, 24 fortresses to defend, and a huge arsenal of spells, weapons, troops, and traps. You can try your luck at interactive video battle below:

Robot Entertainment was founded in 2009, but has already worked on Halo Wars and began the development of Age of Empires Online before that responsibility was handed over to Gas Powered Games. Both the titles Robot Entertainment had a hand in were fun, so we're excited to try the first title fully developed by the studio to see what they can do on their own. Though we had a quick previewof the game from E3 2011, as Robot Entertainment CEO Patrick Hudson says “The slaying hour is nigh upon us,” and we're eager to start wading into freshly chopped orc giblets.