Nuclear Throne is a game about roaming a post-apocalyptic world, a beautiful chaos of destruction. Explosions, weapons, and apocalyptic vibes combine to create an experience full of frantic energy, risk, and tactics. As a typical roguelike, it also offers a ruthless arsenal of weapons, from simple revolvers to plasma lasers. The punchy gameplay attracts many fans who love the thrill of racing through levels fast.
However, it requires patience and strategy, rewarding players whether they prefer to take things slow, go at a medium pace, or rush in quickly. The game features colorful, cartoonish characters, and a simple leveling system provides new skills. Players can approach the game in many unique ways. With its high difficulty level, players can easily spend hours playing. While Nuclear Throne can end instantly, it often rewards players for their efforts.
Like the majority of roguelikes, every single death results in the beginning of a new game. After each run, new weapons and buffs can be unlocked, but like in The Binding of Isaac, the randomness will also play a great role in shaping the experience. Every level is filled with either enemy spawns or item pickups, procedurally generated designs after another. Each level will generally have the same theme, so it will feel familiar to players, even though layouts will never be the same.
When you enter a new zone, planning your next moves is important. Mastering the challenges of each zone is key, and you will need to roll into battle with powerful weapons in hand.
Nuclear Throne is set in a post-apocalyptic world but stands apart from other post-apocalyptic games like Fallout and Crysis. The game’s destruction feels more comical, thanks to the quirky character designs and how radiation affects the characters. There is no narration to guide you—honestly, the game tells its story through its environment, visuals, and character design.
Vlambeer developed a fantastic story but allowed players to discover it alone in this game. Some may want to submerge in the mess and action, but this unique storytelling earned Nuclear Throne a niche of players. Death was always a part of the game, like Bloodborne, but with much more severity due to the nature of the roguelike game.
In Nuclear Throne, death is permanent. When you die, you do not get to reload from where you were; instead, you start over from the very beginning. Before each run, you select a character, each with a unique appearance and abilities. As you play, you aim to clear each level by defeating enemies. Since each level is randomly generated, the experience is always different. The gameplay is straightforward, but Vlambeer adds extra challenges like Daily and Weekly Runs, letting players return what they want.
The strategy in Nuclear Throne is built around an interesting skill system that ties into everything, from enemies to health points. Enemies drop radioactive energy, which acts like experience points. After clearing a level by defeating all enemies, players get to choose one of four mutations before moving on to the next area. While the skills are basic, like gaining more HP or reducing ammo use, they all come with benefits.
There is also a focus on building character abilities, buffing weapon types, and weakening enemies. Choosing the right character adds another layer of challenge on top of managing the primary and secondary weapon slots. Depending on playstyle, characters like Fish, with his rolling, Crystal, with his shield, or Eyes, with his telekinetic powers, each come with unique active and passive abilities. Mutations affect each character you choose as well.
One risky choice is Melting, which has the lowest health points, but the advantage is that Melting is one of the fastest characters to gather Rad and can blow up corpses from a distance. The screen co-op feature allows players to explore how different abilities complement each other.
It is super satisfying when you stack your favorite mutations during a game. Reaching that point of perfection is part of what makes overcoming the challenges in Nuclear Throne so rewarding. Since the game is always changing, each new skill adds a fresh twist. With so many mutations, you will not always get the same options, which keeps things exciting and forces you to adapt your playstyle.
Starting with the tools you have and adapting as you go, you eventually learn to play better on your own. Nuclear Throne has fantastic pixel visuals. Though it is not focused on high-end graphics and audio, the small details add a special touch that makes the game attractive. Watching the game evolve from Early Access and seeing the small improvements over time is pretty exciting.
Vlambeer’s signature style also comes through in the visuals, especially with the vibrating screen effect. The music and distorted sound effects give the game a Mad Max-style feel while you take down waves of enemies.
The simple controls make Nuclear Throne easy to pick up, even in a post-apocalyptic world. It is not one of those games that’s super difficult to play, and the simplicity of the leveling system and clear goals make it accessible to regular players. There are plenty of hidden areas with secret weapons and runes to discover. Even though the game’s action can get pretty complex, it does not feel as deep as other roguelikes.
Brutal yet repetitive, this arcade-style shooter methodically takes you to the throne of powerful explosions. It is one of the best indie games to check out.
References
- Vlambeer. (2015). Nuclear Throne [Indie game, Shooter, Role-playing game]. GameMaker. Jukio Kallio (Composer). Vlambeer (Publisher).
- Walker, J. (2015). Wot I Think: Nuclear Throne. Rock Paper Shotgun.
