Nuclear Throne (2015)

Well, I finally did it! No mess ups. Good enough gear. Good skill rolls. Good map patterns for a few difficult areas.

Crystal. Was blessed with a Lightning hammer, a flak cannon in some areas, and a hyper rifle when fighting throne

Took me about 40+ hours (if we count the beta of wasteland kings, and earlier versions of NT).

NEVER GIVE UP.

I acquired Nuclear Throne a few years ago and at this point it's probably an old game that everyone has played and forgotten about. At the time I had a fiddle around with it, enjoyed it, but kinda tossed it into my bottomless basket of "really cool rogue-like/permadeath games that are too tricky and I'll probably never finish." However, over the past 12 months I've found myself increasingly drawn towards twin-stick bullet hell-style games (Furi was the catalyst) and so one rainy day, beckoned by the bright "Overwhelmingly Positive" score, I decided to have another crack at Nuclear Throne.

Nuclear Throne is a twin-stick shooter arcade thingy with small procedurally-generated levels. The strength of the game lies in the wide variety of levels/builds/weapons/perks/abilities/characters, creating unpredictability and endless replayability: rarely are two runs the same as the player adjusts their playstyle depending on the huge range of modifiers; the challenges of the game can be approached in such vastly different builds, making it feel like an ARPG at times.

The game can be beaten in 10-20 minutes, though most runs will end in a couple minutes for a novice player, and it has that wonderfully addictive "just one more" quality following each death. It's a great game to pick up and fool around with while you've got a little spare time to kill, waiting for a download or whatever.

The game has a simple but unique pixellated aesthetic reminiscent of "The Garbage Pail Kids"/"Toxic Avenger" or something; all of these bizarre mutant creatures, deformed rats, blobby things and worms who wander the chaotic procedural environments. It's both cute and a bit gross, but neat, with strong visual coherence that helpfully assists with movement, navigation and bullet-hell stuff. The sound is unusual but fitting: background music involves eerie ambient tracks and slow haunting guitars and it really sets the off-kilter tone. Sound effects are suitably gross and squelchy, equally satisfying as the punchy bursts and thwocks emitted from your wide arsenal.

The tight, intuitive twin-stick controls give a fast and responsive feel and deaths are rarely cheap or undeserved. Each "dungeon" is procedurally-generated, the player proceeds through a sequence of zones, starting with the desert outskirts, sewers, scrapyard, frozen city, labs, palace and finally the palace (the location of the titular "Throne" itself). Most of these zones end with a boss before you can progress. Each level doesn't have an entry or exit: you simply warp out once you've cleared all the enemies. Perks, weapons, ammo, health drops, enemy types/numbers are all random so one must adapt their playstyle accordingly. Eventually one may unlock more playable characters which provide entirely different strengths, weaknesses and abilities, drastically changing the gameplay and difficulty.

My character of choice is called "Crystal", a weird purple mutant with a higher HP max and a brief deflective shield barrier. I'd say he's basically the easy character for noobs, though it was still a titanic struggle for me. I've played intermittently for years but over the past week or so I decided to knuckle down, face my fears, and I eventually emerged triumphant! I was thrilled, and I've beaten it again several times since, but not with the other playable characters (whom I'm hoping to master in the future).

I was definitely too quick to judge this game, or perhaps I gave up too easily. I'm so glad I returned to it because I've derived such enjoyment from this little game and I expect to get much more out of it. In some ways it feels a little like a spiritual ancestor of Enter the Gungeon, however I much prefer Nuclear Throne for its simplicity: it has a fast arcade feel, no unnecessary bells and whistles, more variety, and that very subtle layer of humour, not to mention the weird post-nuclear-fallout blobby wasteland theme. I also prefer it to Binding of Isaac, another twin-sticker that I've never quite embraced. I'm probably the last person to take proper notice of Nuclear Throne, however if anyone out there hasn't tried it (or if it's sitting in you backlog unplayed) then I'd highly recommend giving it another chance. These days you can often grab it for just a dollar or two. It's brilliant, satisfying, rewarding, less formidable and also much deeper than it initially appears. Play with a controller, good luck, I'll meet you in the throne room. >:-)

edit: Just remembered, I think Jess bought this game for me ages ago for xmas or something so thanks a bunch! <3 Even though I rudely tossed it in my backlog for a couple years. xD

Nuclear Throne is a top-down shooter with randomly generated levels that follow a set area progression. You level up by defeating enemies and find new guns as you progress through the stages. Levelling up lets you pick a trait which affects various aspects of your character. There are many characters you can choose from, each of which has a special action.

Pros: Simple to pick up, fun to play, the guns feel good to use, the guns have a good sense of progression (i.e. late game guns are much more powerful than early game ones).

Middle of the road: Most of the characters you can play are bad compared to the few good ones, but at least that variety is there, I guess?

Cons: The most powerful level-up traits affect how you use certain types of weapons, so you want to match those with your favorite guns. Thing is, too often you get one but not the other, you get a really good bullet-type gun but never come across the bullet-boosting level-up trait. There's 29 traits and you get to choose from 4 randomly selected ones, so you only have a 13-20% chance of rolling the correct one each level-up. This could be lessened somewhat by letting you choose an intrinsic trait, one that you have guaranteed access to (since you will probably want to play the game a certain way most of the time). Also, due to the random generation, some level starts are much more difficult than others, and there's some I've faced that I'd say are straight-up impossible without prior knowledge (you can pause at the beginning of each level to check the layout, but that's boring)

Even though I've written much more about the cons, the game plays very well, just the issues and frustrations are what (with any randomly generated game like this) stand out the most.