Deathtrap

9.5/10 coop, 7.5/10 solo. I've many hours played outside of Steam as well. Fantastic tower defense & action RPG hybrid that allows you to customize your experience by focusing on towers ("traps"), or your hero, or both. There are really fun possibilities like tanking or freezing enemies on top of ground traps or creating synergies between your traps and hero skills. Better with coop as many maps are easier with 2 people covering 2 sides of the map and focusing on different damage types.
Pros:
- Many viable playstyles and trap combos
- Good sound design
- Some unique traps/towers I've not seen in other games before
- You have lot of control over your hero's progression through skills & gear
- Game speed and text scaling options available
- Traps can't be destroyed, so you don't have to worry about keeping them alive or repairing them like in Orcs Must Die or Dungeon Defenders
- Addictive
- One of the best coop games I've ever played. Great for a coop partner who isn't a hardcore gamer, but there's enough to keep them entertained if they are
- $1.99 is a great deal for this when it's on sale
Cons:
- Only 3 heroes, though they do each have a number of directions they can go in
- You can't fully choose where to put traps, but this becomes less of an issue as you enable and buy upgrades for them since they become very strong. At least the locations are always in the enemy lanes and there are usually far more than you'll actually use
- No matter what Steam controller settings you use, the game will always only launch with controller defaulted until you unplug it

First of all, i want to say this game came out almost 10 years ago. But i bought it only 4 days ago! And guess what - people still play this game in online co-op!!
Okay I have no words to express just how IN LOVE I am with this game. I haven't been this hyped for a game in years and damn, it was totally worth my hype. Very challenging gameplay on lastest difficulties. But this game has its own spirit and addictive atmosphere, and I really love it!
This game it's a bomb!! This game will blow your brains! Outstanding gameplay - just perfect and extremely fun, Sound and Music - just fantastic, Graphics - looks pretty cool (for 2015 year). My favorite Sorceress - she is a rock and funny and pretty. A very interesting and truly deep gameplay based on the game universe "The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing".
I am confident that this is the BEST game I have played in the last 20 years!! I recommend it 100 times :D
I give it 10 out of 10 points. Outstanding game! And Great job devs!!
P.S. It's just a shame that Deathtrap 2 will probably never come out...

one of the most underrated games i ever played. it has a whopping 10 daily players but you can also play it solo (its actually kinda easier due to how economy works) played it with a friend trough radmin vpn (has vpn in name but its literally just better hamachi and thats all) and the game was stable af, literally no disconnects or any problems.
generally it was nice, will play more and remommend for that price, you can alos get keys to this game for like 1 euro .

This game blends RTS, with your character running around the levels to set up your traps in this unique tower defense. The main map to navigate levels has access to the Shop for selling and buying items, your Skills level up page, and your Trap level up page. You get a stash with you at all times too, and a gigantic inventory. You complete levels one at a time, roaming around, setting up your towers/traps/defenses. Many, if not most levels have special towers built-in. It will take you approximately 3 levels to get comfortable, using 1, 2, 3, 4, as your abilities. Your mana is called Focus that you generate to cast your chosen abilities.
There are 3 classes to start the game on: Mercenary, Sorceress, Marksman.
How it plays; you choose your level, and difficulty in the main map. Once super-fast load into levels. You get inkpads that you middle mouse click to activate, and left click on the HUD-map that appears to get around the level in an Instant-transmission speed. Literally. You say go there, you're there. No animations teleporting slowly. You set up your traps, with the Essence that you start with, as well as gain during levels from killing the monsters. It feels like Van Helsing. You're running around the map watching the mini-map where the next waves are coming in, preparing for the next waves, upgrading your existing towers. There are usually 5 waves in the levels when you play the game the first time, then you play it a few more times, i believe, to unlock endless. If you don't play beyond normal difficulty, you cannot 3-star any levels. The game involves a fair bit of reading to understand the basics, but once you've got that, OR if you understand tower defense, and RPG's character-inventory management , it will work easily in your favour to play at double speed
If you finish the campaign once, in normal mode A hat, amulet, armour/suit, one ring, and a belt, which usually is your HP Booster. oh and your weapon !
The game is barely taxing on the system, which is kudos for running in the background/pausing to idle/ go do something, - play for tonnes of long hours and never even see a spike in your system, as this is just 5w/h more than idle of win11; :) super, for all that it offers.
It's deep, it's fast, and intuitive if you are a regular tower defense player, and most importantly, it's fun building up your character, and eventually changing to hard to get better loot is of course what makes it fun. The survival is actually perfect, no matter what build you want to play, as long as you update your equipment, spells, skills, and traps, after each level, you'll never fail a level, if you watch the mini-map and support all your lanes. Because you're always running around to maintain your lanes, / teleporting / you cannot fall asleep. You're active more than you generally are for a tower defense, but your efficiency can be rewarded too, as in, long term, your upgrades make survival far easier than the beginning. The game also doesn't slaughter you in the introduction to it all.
Learning all the levels and caveats with what special towers vs. your standard builds is something that adapting a new style in the re-play helps. It gives new challenges as side-quests to complete when you play the levels the next time, such as don't use summons, don't use a mystic tower.
The towers, are plenty and they all synergize well, Each one has 3 different types of upgrades, and each upgrade has 3 levels of that said upgrade. So, for example, one is 30% damage increase, one is 15% slow when shooting the enemies, and one applies 50% area of effect damage, if shooting more than 2m away, - you can upgrade each of these 3x to get great towers, which just need you to be there, when the waves are coming in, and help save the day.
The tower/trap types are split across traps in the floor, traps that summon creatures/archers/beasts, mystic traps that use the elements, like a fireball launcher, a death ray laser, an ice-beam frost attack classed under 'mystic' weapons. You then get Mechanical weapons like a gun sentry, a razer blade launcher, or the flame thrower. The floor traps include acid geysers, javelin/spear pits, lava grills,
All of the traps in the levels are activated on specific interfaces for the said traps. You can't place all traps where you would like.
The enemy types, are beastly, and ranging in the types of damage, such as frost, poison, and fire. When you're shooting, angles can look a bit crooked, as in you're aiming into the distance, or shooting through your towers. You cannot, and the enemy cannot destroy your towers in this game.
You get many different abilities, and I'm only looking at the marksman screen/partially. There are global abilities, of many kinds to upgrade with skill points each level. You can unlock global skills for your classes like: Increase loot quantity/quality , make every attack on enemies have poison vulnerability /starting at 1%, reduce trap cooldowns, increase trap stuns/effects on enemies, it's vast, and unlocked gradually, in the first 5-10 hours, you can be level 20;
If you love tower defense, and have been itching to try something new in regard to this genre, pick this beauty up!! It's a brilliant find, and very unique.
If you get killed during a level, your death impacts enemies passing past you to exit the gate, and affect it's volatility; hence your score /stars out of 3 when you complete a level. Your deaths counts as damage to the gate/portal you're protecting
The main gripes I think we all may have with this game, is the camera is not rotatable. It may sometimes upset you, or require you to move to specific locations just to see something you want to. This isometric approach is one of the most annoying drawbacks of this amazing game.
Another was, when first launching this game, because i have a controller plugged in, the game defaulted to controller, and i had to use the controller to turn it off in the game's settings. Then the game also needed a restart for this change. So, controllers are definitely supported 100% if you want to sit back and play a TDF in ultra-comfort mode; :)

10 Years old and still one of the best Tower Defense games you can play today.
Dark atmosphere with a huge variety of traps and enemies.

A magnificent blend of diablo style rpg elements and tower defense. Similar to games like sanctum, but with more in depth character development part that includes talent trees for both traps and your character, crafting, equipping, shopping, co-op and more.

I wish i knew the game was this good when it released so i could have supported it back then.
Fills me with sadness that due to its niche nature it was dropped before even DLCs could have been released for it.
Still, functional, fun and if you wanna max it out, it easily cover 20-40 hours of gameplay.

My View:
I honestly haven't played a Tower Defense game since grade school. I read an article that mentioned this game by chance and I decided to buy it. This game is well worth it. One of the most fun Tower Defense games I have ever played. There are only certain spots you can place traps and towers which I didn't like at first but it makes it challenging. You can also equip gear and spells.
Worth the Money? Yes
In-Game Screenshots? YEs
PC Specs:
Mobo- MSI Pro B760-P
RAM- 32GB
CPU- Intel i7 13700KF
Main Storage- 1TB m.2 SSD
GPU- ASUS ROG 4090
SteamDeck:
Worked? Yes
Recommend? Yes