Taylor and I, wearing our naivety right on our sleeves, made our way to the final stage of Nuclear Throne a few hours of game time back. We thought wistfully of our impending victory. We thought we were on the very precipice of glory, of finally ascending the Nuclear Throne. And now, here we sit, 5 sessions after the fact with essentially nothing to show for it. For reference's sake, here's a list of things we could've accomplished in the twelve hours we've spent thrashing our bodies against the wasteland:
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And then we got our hind ends kicked around by Nuclear Throne for a couple more hours.
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I don't want to spoil anything, but we get a brief glimpse at our final goal this session, and boy howdy, we were not prepared. We were always bound to learn enemy logic and boss patterns in the early levels due to sheer repetition, but we're now starting to reach my favorite part of roguelikes: the extreme reaches of a successful "run".
Taylor and I are (hopefully) reaching the limits of what Nuclear Throne has to offer. Well, that's not entirely true. Like any Upstanding Roguelike, there are probably entire grottos of extra content hidden just beneath the surface, and by "surface", that thing that has fought us tooth and nail for every inch of progress. To keep the experience as pure as possible, I've tried to stray from wikis, forums, and the like, but suffice it to say that I've seen enough to recognize the limits of my own knowledge.
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Taylor and I are just a few sessions deep into "Ascend the Nuclear Throne", but our floundering attempts to claim the throne for ourselves are probably nearing the hundreds. That's the way these thing works, though, right? My experiences with roguelikes have done nothing if not reinforce the idea that you're a total dweeb until, for one shining moment, you're both all that and a bag of chips. We aim to one day be that bag of chips (at least).
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Nuclear Throne is a game that punishes a lack of skill without judgement or pretension. When you've failed to reach your distant goal for the 13th time in an hour, the game doesn't chide you or offer to lower its own difficulty (the most underhanded of insults, in my opinion). Instead, it merely tells you, "You deserved that. Wanna go again?" This isn't a new formula by any means. Plenty of games offer near-immediate restarts upon failure, but it's a technique that I've found myself dwelling on more and more as my experiences with roguelikes deepen. In some twisted way, I've found it to be almost encouraging, like a stern, no-nonsense kung fu master. Despite continued failures, the game persists in our training, knowing that our determination will eventually give way to some deep, untapped potential.
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We made substantial progress last night, mostly because we finally gave into that fad all the kids are into called - correct me if I'm wrong - "learning from our mistakes(???)". Because we're professionals, our past couple sessions had mostly consisted of ramming our heads into the proverbial wall over and over and then dazedly cheering when, lo and behold, a millimeter of cement happened to chip off. This time around, though, your intrepid heroes spent a small amount of time reflecting on what went wrong after each failed attempt and then applied that newly gleaned knowledge onto the next run. The effects weren't exactly mind-blowing, but hey, the planet didn't become a nuclear wasteland overnight.
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The concept of the roguelike has, shall we say, saturated the market for the last couple of years now. Starting around 2011, developers big and small clamored to incorporate the major pillars of the genre into their games, varying in both extent and effect. For many, that clamoring amounted to some form of procedural generation, but a f....jpg)
Ascend the Nuclear Throne.
No? Well, what if your name was "Fish"? What then? Still nothing? How about if both your name was "Fish" and you were a humanoid, mutated fish? What if you had a laser pistol and a passing knowledge of how to roll?
Set in a post apocalyptic future, players assume the role of a single mutant creature who's trying to both survive the radioactive world and become the most powerful being around. Using the environment's available nuclear waste to mutate it's appearance and abilities, the outcome of its full potential becomes entirely up to the players imagination. This rouge-like action game becomes very intense right from the get-go, so players find themselves in a fast past setting that constantly keeps them on their toes and evolving their strategies to survive. Vlambeer showed off an all new trailer of the game during this past PAX East, shown below:
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