Nuclear Throne is a very well-known and well-liked Roguelite. Don't get me wrong, I love Roguelites; TBoI, EtG, FTL are some of my favorite games out there. Ultimately though, I feel Nuclear Throne falls short of its premise - be random enough to be considered a good Roguelite, and balanced enough to be the skill-oriented game its fanbase perceives it to be.

First come the Mutations, core upgrades that would normally carry any other Roguelite, that felt extremely underwhelming to me. This is mostly due to the fact you will always feel you lack the two main resources in this game, health and ammo, with said upgrades then being deliberately designed to remedy that.

Your character can die in 3 shots at best, or instantly at worst, from the very first stage in the game and at any other point throughout it (bar one character). This is horrible game design; no enemy should be able to instakill you unless it is a boss or you screw up badly. This forces you to pick one of the only three immunity mutations, or the only one health-up featured in the game, just to be able to survive.

Ammo pools (other than that of Bullet weapons) are minuscule - 55 units per type. They severely limit the better weapons the game has on offer, which will oftentimes consume 2-8 units per shot. This compels you to pick the one mutation that makes ammo pools larger, the few that make weapons better so you get kills more reliably, or the rest that give you more ammo, drops or containers per stage.

This compensatory mutation selection is random - every time you pick one the rest are shuffled back into the pool. That said, you are only able to level up 9 times in total, thus pick only 9 mutations out of the 28 possible. You may never even encounter the crucial mutations that will make reaching the endgame possible. Many characters also rely on a specific mutation to make their Active viable to use, and some weapons need mutations to keep up with enemy spawns and health scaling lategame.

The fact that you need these mutations doesn't make them any more interesting; it feels they’re there to compensate for your weaknesses rather than to generally complement your character setup. They elevate the gameplay to a properly-playable level, but never really seem to empower you further.

The way you acquire ammo and health in this game is bizarre. For starters, you can't get health drops if you’re not wounded; in order to gain health you already need to be at almost half HP, which puts you in a position where you can die from most damage sources instantly. Now, if you aren't low on ammo, you won't get ammo drops. Ammo drops get converted to health if you're wounded, thus, if you're full on ammo, you won't be getting any health whatsoever.

Then, ammo drops give ammo to a random weapon you carry, not the one you're holding. If said weapon happens to be full you’ll be getting more random ammo instead - not some for your secondary. This is ridiculous; why not refill ammo I use for the weapon I want? "Gift" chests will sometimes replace regular ammo chests and deliberately refill neither, which is infuriating. If you want another ammo chest potentially spawning for you each stage you'll need to choose the right compensatory mutation.

Base chance to spawn loot from corpses is very low. If you look it up you’ll find only a fraction of all enemies can even drop loot to begin with, that’s including bosses. This is another arbitrary design choice that makes acquiring health, ammo and weapons needlessly difficult.

Along with the awful implementation of the core game systems, Nuclear Throne features a myriad other frustrating issues. On top of all problems with health and ammo, drops fade and vanish within seconds if you’re not quick enough to pick them up. This is yet more punishment for completing the sole objective of this game, which is simply killing enemies.

The procedural stage generation is inconsistent. Sometimes it generates tight corridors with little to no wiggle room to dodge projectiles in, sometimes large open areas with zero cover from enemy fire. The difficulty curve relies entirely on enemy group composition, which is random. This would’ve been fine had the AI been predictable, but it’s not. It never telegraphs it is about to attack you, which can seriously screw you over at times.

There are no enemy indicators on screen, and the portal to the next level appears as soon as you kill the last enemy, forcefully transporting you to the next stage. This is a problem if you’re still considering using a shortcut, or are choosing weapons in preparation for the next area.

Instead of having random weapon drops, Nuclear Throne has weapon "tiers". Each level beaten unlocks more weapons that can spawn for you throughout the run. This sounds good on paper - progress farther to get better loot - but in reality the chance to receive the worse drops persists throughout each level to a point where you can find the same bad gun 5-6 times in one run. The opposite never happens - weapons from the upper tiers physically cannot appear earlier in-game unless they’re Cursed, which doesn’t happen often.

This is a great shame considering the weapons in Nuclear Throne are most definitely its strongest suit and would’ve been really fun to use had the aforementioned ammo drop system and weapon tiers not overshadowed their existence.

The same 7 areas persist throughout every single game, in the very same order. Every other area has its own one boss assigned to it. You fight the same enemies assigned to each area. There are 15 stages in total, with the last one being the final boss fight. This is all fine (other than the fact the store page spoils everything). What is not fine is how fast you beat them.

The first stages in this game can be completed in about 10-15 seconds - later stages in about a minute. The entire game can be beaten in less than 10 minutes. This is absolutely horrendous for a title that costs $12 and never goes on sale.

This is then made worse by the meta-progression. It's pitiful. All 12 characters can be unlocked in the span of a few hours, in 10-12 minute game sessions. Their alternative skins take longer to unlock (which is what actually occupies most players, including myself), but these skins don't actually have any effect on gameplay.

Crowns - unlockable perks that give runs different properties - are absolutely atrocious. Using them completely botches your run, e.g. limiting your mutation selection from four to one, or removing health and ammo drops from the game entirely. The positive trade-offs are so negligible, compared to how they basically doom you to fail, I cannot help but feel they're only there to increase your highscore on the leaderboards - another thing that has no impact on your game, as it doesn't actually unlock anything.

For some reason you can unlock and select all 12 of those Crowns on the character selection screen, but not the better (Golden) starter weapons, which are unlocked one at a time for each character. Why force me to go through the same tedious, chance-based, “secret” method of unlocking one every other run?

Lastly, scorekeeping - a prevalent feature in Vlambeer games that always comes at the expense of a proper ending to the game for some reason. In Super Crate Box you have SFMT, as you do in LUFTRAUSERS, in Nuclear Throne you have a concept called Loops; go through the same 7 areas again fighting more of (almost) the very same enemy while keeping your mutations and one character-unique ability to aid you.

A Loop is, in essence, blatantly recycled content; evidently much easier for Vlambeer to implement than to come up with original ideas for a truly inspired endgame. Vlambeer have also consistently failed to optimize their games, this one running at a 4:3 aspect ratio locked to 30 FPS. This is completely unacceptable for a game release in 2015, and almost singlehandedly prevents me from recommending it.

Nuclear Throne is a very well-known and well-liked Roguelite. Don't get me wrong, I love Roguelites; TBoI, EtG, FTL are some of my favorite games out there. Ultimately though, I feel Nuclear Throne falls short of its premise - be random enough to be considered a good Roguelite, and balanced enough to be the skill-oriented game its fanbase perceives it to be. First come the Mutations, core upgrades that would normally carry any other Roguelite, that felt extremely underwhelming to me. This is mostly due to the fact you will always feel you lack the two main resources in this game, health and ammo, with said upgrades then being deliberately designed to remedy that. Your character can die in 3 shots at best, or instantly at worst, from the very first stage in the game and at any other point throughout it (bar one character). This is horrible game design; no enemy should be able to instakill you unless it is a boss or you screw up badly. This forces you to pick one of the only three immunity mutations, or the only one health-up featured in the game, just to be able to survive. Ammo pools (other than that of Bullet weapons) are minuscule - 55 units per type. They severely limit the better weapons the game has on offer, which will oftentimes consume 2-8 units per shot. This compels you to pick the one mutation that makes ammo pools larger, the few that make weapons better so you get kills more reliably, or the rest that give you more ammo, drops or containers per stage. This compensatory mutation selection is random - every time you pick one the rest are shuffled back into the pool. That said, you are only able to level up 9 times in total, thus pick only 9 mutations out of the 28 possible. You may never even encounter the crucial mutations that will make reaching the endgame possible. Many characters also rely on a specific mutation to make their Active viable to use, and some weapons need mutations to keep up with enemy spawns and health scaling lategame. The fact that you need these mutations doesn't make them any more interesting; it feels they’re there to compensate for your weaknesses rather than to generally complement your character setup. They elevate the gameplay to a properly-playable level, but never really seem to empower you further. The way you acquire ammo and health in this game is bizarre. For starters, you can't get health drops if you’re not wounded; in order to gain health you already need to be at almost half HP, which puts you in a position where you can die from most damage sources instantly. Now, if you aren't low on ammo, you won't get ammo drops. Ammo drops get converted to health if you're wounded, thus, if you're full on [i]ammo[/i], you won't be getting any health whatsoever. Then, ammo drops give ammo to a random weapon you carry, not the one you're holding. If said weapon happens to be full you’ll be getting more random ammo instead - not some for your secondary. This is ridiculous; why not refill ammo I use for the weapon I want? "Gift" chests will sometimes replace regular ammo chests and deliberately refill neither, which is infuriating. If you want another ammo chest potentially spawning for you each stage you'll need to choose the right compensatory mutation. Base chance to spawn loot from corpses is very low. If you look it up you’ll find only a fraction of all enemies can even drop loot to begin with, that’s including bosses. This is another arbitrary design choice that makes acquiring health, ammo and weapons needlessly difficult. Along with the awful implementation of the core game systems, Nuclear Throne features a myriad other frustrating issues. On top of all problems with health and ammo, drops fade and vanish within seconds if you’re not quick enough to pick them up. This is yet more punishment for completing the sole objective of this game, which is simply killing enemies. The procedural stage generation is inconsistent. Sometimes it generates tight corridors with little to no wiggle room to dodge projectiles in, sometimes large open areas with zero cover from enemy fire. The difficulty curve relies entirely on enemy group composition, which is random. This would’ve been fine had the AI been predictable, but it’s not. It never telegraphs it is about to attack you, which can seriously screw you over at times. There are no enemy indicators on screen, and the portal to the next level appears as soon as you kill the last enemy, forcefully transporting you to the next stage. This is a problem if you’re still considering using a shortcut, or are choosing weapons in preparation for the next area. Instead of having random weapon drops, Nuclear Throne has weapon "tiers". Each level beaten unlocks more weapons that can spawn for you throughout the run. This sounds good on paper - progress farther to get better loot - but in reality the chance to receive the worse drops persists throughout each level to a point where you can find the same bad gun 5-6 times in one run. The opposite never happens - weapons from the upper tiers physically cannot appear earlier in-game unless they’re Cursed, which doesn’t happen often. This is a great shame considering the weapons in Nuclear Throne are most definitely its strongest suit and would’ve been really fun to use had the aforementioned ammo drop system and weapon tiers not overshadowed their existence. The same 7 areas persist throughout every single game, in the very same order. Every other area has its own one boss assigned to it. You fight the same enemies assigned to each area. There are 15 stages in total, with the last one being the final boss fight. This is all fine (other than the fact the store page spoils everything). What is [i]not[/i] fine is how fast you beat them. The first stages in this game can be completed in about 10-15 [b][i]seconds[/i][/b] - later stages in about a minute. The entire game can be beaten in less than 10 minutes. This is absolutely [i]horrendous[/i] for a title that costs $12 and never goes on sale. This is then made worse by the meta-progression. It's pitiful. All 12 characters can be unlocked in the span of a few hours, in 10-12 minute game sessions. Their alternative skins take longer to unlock (which is what actually occupies most players, including myself), but these skins don't actually have any effect on gameplay. Crowns - unlockable perks that give runs different properties - are absolutely atrocious. Using them completely botches your run, e.g. limiting your mutation selection from four to one, or removing health and ammo drops from the game entirely. The positive trade-offs are so negligible, compared to how they basically doom you to fail, I cannot help but feel they're only there to increase your highscore on the leaderboards - another thing that has no impact on your game, as it doesn't actually unlock anything. For some reason you can unlock and select all 12 of those Crowns on the character selection screen, but not the better (Golden) starter weapons, which are unlocked one at a time for each character. Why force me to go through the same tedious, chance-based, “secret” method of unlocking one every other run? Lastly, scorekeeping - a prevalent feature in Vlambeer games that always comes at the expense of a proper ending to the game for some reason. In Super Crate Box you have SFMT, as you do in LUFTRAUSERS, in Nuclear Throne you have a concept called Loops; go through the same 7 areas again fighting more of (almost) the very same enemy while keeping your mutations and one character-unique ability to aid you. A Loop is, in essence, blatantly recycled content; evidently much easier for Vlambeer to implement than to come up with original ideas for a truly inspired endgame. Vlambeer have also consistently failed to optimize their games, this one running at a 4:3 aspect ratio locked to 30 FPS. This is completely unacceptable for a game release in 2015, and almost singlehandedly prevents me from recommending it.