Genre: Shooter, Role-playing (RPG), Adventure, Indie, ArcadeNuclear Throne
Hotfix #8 - Big Bites - Hotfix for Update #66
Update #66 - Yung Update - Weekend of March 27th
Another week, another update! This update might seem a bit modest, as we've been very busy working on things behind the screens. We're working on a total menu overhaul for the game (it's starting to look pretty good!) and are also busy getting a couple of fun surprises in soon.
You'll find the game now sorts mutation icons in the order you got them and has a brand new type of cannon that is still unfinished! We also hope we finally squashed the Sharp Teeth bug, and we've changed Rebel to use a way more basic upkeep system, encouraging both easier early Allies while making the cost for giant armies a bit more than what it was before.
Anyway, dig in, and get playing! Exciting huge things coming soon.
- Features
- The work in progress Blood Cannon.
- The HUD icons are now sorted in the order you got them.
Balancing - Ammo, Health and Portal Strike pickups now fade faster on loops. This'll be interesting.
- Rebel's first Ally now costs 1HP, any additional ones cost 2HP.
- Snow Tanks now wait a bit before exploding.
- The Throne beam now angles slightly towards you, something we wanted to give a quick try.
- Big Dog missiles are meaner on loops.
- Blood Hammer deals more damage.
- More IDPD now chases Rogue when her portal opens.
Fixes - Fixed the Sharp Teeth thing. We hope. Fingers crossed.
- The Rad Canister in the HUD now has an outline when you get your Ultra Mutation and haven't picked it yet.
- Open Mind chests now count towards big weapon chests, as do gold weapon chests.
Misc - Art for the Heavy Auto Crossbow and Heavy Assault Rifle!
- Patience now becomes a clock under the mutation you pick with it, instead of taking a whole icon slot.
- Hyper Rifle shakes the screen a bit less.
Good luck!
Update #65 - Warming Up - Weekend of March 20th
First of all, thanks so much for your patience and your understanding. GDC and PAX are two of the largest events of the year, and the entire Nuclear Throne team was out at GDC. We managed to get together for only fifteen minutes between all of our meetings, talks and meetups and we snapped the first-ever Nuclear Throne team photo!
Anyway, we're a bit rusty after two weeks of conferences and travel, but it's about time we get another update out there!
Let's start with the first one you'll notice: welcome an updated logo to the title screen! This is just the tip of the giant iceberg that's the total interface overhaul we've been discussing in the team chat. We intend to improve all our menus visually, but mainly improve the usability for both mouse and gamepads a ton! This is one of the most difficult things left on our (massive) to do list, so please bear with us the coming weeks while we try to tackle such an enormous task.
Besides a shiny new logo, there's a great new bullet weapon, tips for ultra characters, improved loop difficulty, and you can now even use the digits to quick-select mutations! We made some much-needed fixes we've been frustrated at from afar reading the forums at GDC & PAX, and we've spent a lot of time balancing. Hopefully our time away from development helped us gain some much-needed critical distance and insights, leading to some really solid progress it the next few weeks.
Or it might just turn out that we completely broke Melting and Rebel.
We'll see!
- Features
- Updated in-game logo by the legendary Paul Veer, known for the art of games such as Nuclear Throne.
- Heavy Assault Rifle.
- Characters now have new tips when reaching Level Ultra. We also added/changed some tips for Steroids, Y.V. and Rebel.
- You can now quick-select mutations using the digits.
- Improved Big Dog on loop with some fun new tech.
- Lil' Hunter spawn faster on loops.
- Made Golden Scorpions less rare the further you loop!
Balancing - Big change to Rebel: Allies now cost more, the more you have of them. Cost starts at 1HP, and improves by 1 for each 2 Allies, capping at a cost of 4. The Ultra that spawns Allies when taking damage sticks to this as well, so gives you double Allies when used now! This probably still needs some balancing.
- Melting now always gets big explosions from larger enemies, even without Throne Butt.
- Melting's Throne Butt is now a bit weaker than it used to be, but it's still ridiculously powerful!
- Melting's Ultra that blows up low HP enemies no longer makes those enemies spawn corpses.
- Blood Hammer is now a lot more interesting...
- Splinter weapons now deal a bit more damage.
- Lowered the rate of fire on the Auto Grenade Shotgun and Gatling Bazooka. These weapons should now be more usable, with a bit of caution of course. Gatling Bazooka has been made more accurate as well.
- Party's over, Crown of Blood now makes all enemies drop one less rad.
- Labs spawns more empty space around you.
- Necromancers wait a bit longer before doing stuff after spawn.
- We buffed Lucky Shot a bit more, we're going to keep doing this until it's ridiculously OP and people start noticing it!
- Hyper Rifle now shoots 5 bullet bursts instead.
- Heavy Slugger damage has been increased even more.
Fixes - Fixed the notorious infinite water boost for Fish.
- Big Dog no longer spawns awake.
- Fixed the IDPD grenade error.
- Fixed Sharp Teeth rapidly phasing Ravens and Lil Hunter in and out of The 11th Dimension.
- Underwater Mines no longer spawn next to you.
- The random character and crown option are no longer seeded.
- Fixed a collision problem with IDPD grenades, potentially nerfing them a bit.
- Fixed the Lightning Hammer icon, again.
Again, thanks so much for your understanding. We're back in action. Let us know what you think, and don't forget to spread the word about Nuclear Throne! Livestreams are starting again too, every Tuesday and Thursday, 1PM CET until 5PM CET.
Update #64 - Maintenance Week - Weekend of February 27th
New logo and 'cover art'! Cool, right? We all felt it was about time, and Justin and Paul worked super hard on getting these beautiful things ready for prime time.
Anyway, this is a big one, filled with tiny things! We decided to spend our time working on a lot of smaller items that've been on our to do list for a while, resulting in a pretty interesting update! We made some major changes to Shell weapons (more damage up close or after bouncing with Shotgun Shoulders), gave burst weapons way better support for mutations, added the first upgraded loop boss, made a new overpowered bolt weapon, fixed weapons not coming through portals with you, made Sharp Teeth cooler, etc. etc. etc. There's a lot.
- Features
- Reworked the way Shell weapons work! They now get a significant damage boost when hitting things super close to the player, which is reactivated for two frames after bouncing with Shotgun Shoulders as well.
- Burst weapons got a bit of a fix, now allowing Long Arms, Eagle Eyes, and Steroids lack of accuracy to work with them!
- The very first, early test for upgraded loop bosses has been implemented. Good luck fighting Big Bandits.
- We added an overpowered new Bolt Weapon.
Balancing - The Proto Statue now has more health, will no longer get destroyed by big melee enemies, gets more HP on loops, and will be easier to break after activating.
- Cluster Launcher spawns slightly later.
- Horror's A Ultra spawns even less projectiles.
- Horror's Throne Butt has been improved, now charging your beam up twice as fast.
- Super Flak Cannon now deals more damage.
- Hostile Horror will wait a bit longer after spawn before attacking.
- Sharp Teeth no longer works on props.
Fixes - Weapons should now properly come with you through portals!
- Fixed the health of Allies with Rebel's A Ultra.
- Plant can no longer one-shot things with a ton of health with the saplings.
- Big Dog now always wakes up!
- Steroids no longer gets "MAX MELEE AMMO" popups with Throne Butt.
- Horror's beam should no longer push enemies through walls.
- Allies should no longer get damage from most Impact Wrist corpses.
- Broken Walls now show up on B Floors as well.
- There will no longer be walls spawned on top of the Proto Statue.
- Big Rads are no longer attracted to unactivated Proto Statues.
- IDPD grenades can now be hit away with a melee weapon.
Misc - Sharp Teeth now deals damage after a short, staggered delay, on the right frame of its animation.
- The popup for "LEVEL 10!" now says "LEVEL ULTRA!".
- Big Dog now shakes the screen when walking.
- Trigger Fingers now shows a shine on your gun when triggered.
- Improved and added some tips.
- Fish now angles in his movement direction when using Throne Butt. This'll eventually get a custom animation!
- The game Freezes slightly shorter when killing smaller enemies now.
- Bullets now spawn their hit effects when hitting walls as well.
Whew, loads of stuff! This week we'll be at GDC, so there'll probably not be an update. Anyway, keep letting us know how y'all feel, and thanks a ton for playing!
Update #63 - Free Crowns - Weekend of February 20th
We took a week off for a medical emergency, but now we're back. For this week. But it's a Significant Update, so prepare yourselves!
For those of you who follow the games industry closely, next week is when pretty much anyone that has the ability to do so goes to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. That means our update schedule for the rest of February and start of March is going to be slowed down or non-existent.
To make sure there's plenty of interesting new things to play for y'all in that period, we've decided to implement a very significant thing to the game. As we slowly march towards 'feature-complete', the unlock systems are slowly starting to fall into place. That also means the loadout systems need to start existing, and a first version of that is what this week brings.
You can now start the game with any crown. We've built a terrible placeholder interface for this (we're actually planning a major interface overhaul after GDC), and made everything available to you from the start. In the final version of the game, you'll have to beat the game with a Crown in order to be able to start with that Crown.
This has more consequences than just "running with a crown". There'll be Crown Guardians and a Protochest in 3-2, there'll be Cursed Chests right from the start (they actually carry better weapons than normal Chests), and of course, there's a complimentary IDPD spawn in 1-1. Anyway, tons of interesting runs will come from that!
Other than some fixes (no more freezing), polish, and balancing, we've also implemented an option to swap weapons with Q again! This is a temporary solution until we implement properly customizable controls. One more thing: there's a new mutation, Open Mind. It gives you an extra Chest or Rad Canister on every level!
Have fun messing with those Crowns, and please let us know how broken things can get!
- Features
- Loadout screen! Pick a Crown from the start by clicking the ugly icon on the right of the character select.
- Q Swap option.
- New mutation: Open Mind. We've renamed Racing Mind to Trigger Fingers, and Shotgun Fingers to Shotgun Shoulders.
Balancing - Pop Rifle spawns sooner.
- Weapons using tiny grenades spawn sooner.
- Jock Missiles now explode a bit differently.
Fixes - Fixed the freezes caused by IDPD spawns.
- You can no longer get a HP Chest and Rad Canister on the same level.
Misc - New silhouettes for locked characters.
- Updated Crown Vault tiles.
- Rain now looks cool in Slow Motion.
- Updated the trail for Plasma weapons.
- Nukes now have a cool booster flame.
- Renamed one of the Horror Ultras.
- You now drag some flames behind you when Boiling Veins is triggered.
- Steroids now also spawns curse particles when holding the cursed weapon in his secondary hand.
Finally, we've started with a final pass on the game branding. You'll notice new key art on the store and elsewhere. As we rev up towards completing, all of our marketing materials and key art will get a final pass, including the logo itself. We're super excited to be headed towards something we can see in the distance with you all. Keep sending us that feedback!
<3
Update #62 - Terribly Special Effects - Weekend of February 6th
This is an exciting update! We've decided to spend some of our time making mutations look and communicate better, by adding tons of little effects. You can now take a look at your character and see if your Strong Spirit triggered yet, how strong your Stress is, whether you have Gamma Guts or not, and all kinds of cool stuff like that! Other than that, we've done some more bug fixing and balancing, hopefully resulting in a more stable, fun, and pretty Nuclear Throne!
We were going to try and tackle another significant feature next week, but we've had a bit of a medical emergency in the team this weekend. As such, we're giving everybody on the team a errk of downtime while this team member recovers, and we'll see what happens afterwards. Either way, we've really been revving up, and we'll continue to go full speed ahead as soon as our team is back to full strength.
In the meanwhile, this build was uploaded from 30,000 feet above the San Francisco Bay Area. Not that that's really important, but the notion that even that can't stop us from updating the game is kind of amusing to us.
- Features
- Probably the best feature in weeks: a new movie for Chicken to watch on her TV!
- Tons of little effects for mutations, and character abilities.
- Bolts now have sweet trails!
- Further changes to the character portraits & mutation icons.
Balancing - Lil Hunter now spawns after a short delay, to give you some time to prepare the battlefield before fighting them.
- Lil Hunter now breaks walls when flying around.
- Lil Hunter's attack now has a bit more spread.
- No more IDPD when taking a tour of the mansion. Security is better than that!
- Removed friction from bolts.
- Explo Freaks now wait a bit longer at the start of a level.
- IDPD Portals now break walls, this might fix some "no portal" problems players have had.
Fixes - Horror's Throne Butt text now fits on the screen.
- Better origin for the Golden Bazooka.
- Fixed a Rad Canister crash.
- Chicken no longer has normal rate of fire when using her special.
- Pressing Q no longer swaps weapons. Use spacebar for now!
- Changed some sound effects back to high quality after accidentally messing that up last week.
- Some of the second tier Golden Weapons no longer spawn on your first Venus visit.
Misc - New hitmask for the small bone props in Desert.
- Named some more Ultra Mutations.
- The mutation icons on the HUD have been moved 1 pixel to the right.
- Picking up bigger amounts of HP results in bigger hearts spawning.
- Added flames behind Rockets and particles behind Plasma.
- You now get a "NOT ENOUGH RADS" notification when trying to fire an Ultra Weapon without rads.
That's it for this week! Have fun, and please enjoy all the new effects!
Update #61 - Taking out the Trash - Weekend of January 28th
Every now and then we really need to sit down and take a look at the mess we've made with previous updates. That's why this week was spent fixing tiny bugs, annoyances, doing some much-needed balancing and adding loads of tiny improvements! Most of these probably cause new problems to pop up, and will break all kinds of unrelated things! These are truely exciting times.
[listFeatures
<*> We started on reworking Lil Hunter. Now less of a "kill instantly or get killed instantly affair", and more of a challenge.
<*> Update to the character select portraits. That art was old!
<*> A new Throne Butt for Chicken, allowing her to run at normal speed when using slow motion instead of having normal rate of fire.
<*> A rare, new weapon that only spawns under certain conditions. Sorry.
<*> Enemies now have 10% more HP per loop.
<*> New Crown Vault tiles and torches. More work on these soon!
Balancing
<*> Cursed chests no longer drop the most basic of weapons.
<*> Changed Horror's Ultra B to shoot slightly less projectiles, but also work from canisters.
<*> More spread for the Lightning Shotgun.
<*> Rabbit Paw got a slight nerf, mainly for weapon spawns.
<*> Energy Hammer has a tiny bit higher rate of fire now.
<*> Energy Sword has a bit lower rate of fire now.
<*> Hammerhead requires less pushing.
<*> Lucky Shot has been improved and gives bigger chunks of ammo.
<*> Fire Traps have a bit longer pauses in between flames.
<*> [CLASSIFIED] boxes can now drop [CLASSIFIED] when destroyed! Radical!
<*> Smaller hitbox for the Proto Statues (and also for the Fish skull in Desert).
Fixes
<*> Fixed the omnipresent quick restart crash.
<*> Throne can no longer be disappeared with Sharp Teeth.
<*> Fixed a super cool save editing exploit.
<*> Melting can no longer blow up invisible corpses, like cars had.
<*> Crystal enemies no longer flip horizontally when aiming at you.
<*> Proto Statues no longer get trampled.
<*> Fixed some weapons related to Eyes A Ultra.
<*> No more normal big weapon chests when taking a tour of the mansion.
Misc
<*> Added ZQSD support.
<*> Changed the tip for Strong Spirit into something way better.
<*> IDPD Grenades should now make a short warning sound right before exploding.
<*> Impact effects for Slugs and Heavy Slugs!
<*> New sprite for the Ultra Bolts.
<*> New sprites for the Crystal Spiders.
<*> Golden Bazooka no fires a sparkling Golden Rocket!
That's all folks! Have fun and let us know how you feel!
Hotfix #7 - Dogs and Claws - Hotfix for Update #60
Update #60 - The Gun Update - Weekend of January 23rd
Brace yourselves, this is a big one! Our short break helped re-energize us a bit, and that has resulted in this ridiculously feature-filled monster of an update.
Let's just dig into things: First of all, we've broken the 100-gun barrier, putting us at a grand total of 101 weapons! Celebrate this landmark moment by trying out some of the new Golden Weapons, or the incredibly powerful Devastator!
We've also managed to include the final Ultra Mutations, with brand new abilities for Fish, Plant, Eyes (we replaced the homing projectiles with something way more fun), and Yung Venuz. This doesn't mean we're done with the Ultras, as some of them might still be changed around and most of them still need some love, but it does mean you can safely take the Crown of Destiny without ending up with empty hands!
Besides all that, all the weapon sound effects have been redone and we've added a bunch more sounds to weapons that didn't have their own voice yet. There's also two new ambiences for the 0_1 level, an updated Crown Guardian track and a unique little jingle for when you beat those! And all that is just the main features, we haven't even gotten to the fixes (hammerhead and strong spirit have been given a boost), the new ultra icons, or any of the millions of other things we've done!
Please dig in, and let us know what you think!
- Features
- A new load of Golden Weapons! Say hello to the Golden Slugger, Assault Rifle, Plasma Gun, Screwdriver, Splinter Gun and Bazooka! These won't be nearly as easy to get as the normal Golden Weapons.
- The Devastator.
- New Ultra Mutations for Eyes, Fish, Plant and Yung Venuz!
- Icons for all Ultra Mutations, Hammerhead and Strong Spirit.
- Remastered and brand new weapon and swap sounds!
- Updated Crown Vault tracks, and new ambience tracks for 0_1.
Balancing - The Heavy Slugger now has a way higher rate of fire, but less range.
- Hammerhead now requires you to really push against a wall.
- Strong Spirit now saves your live once, and recharges by returning to full HP. Really needs visual some effects for communication purposes, but we haven't gotten to that yet.
- No more Crown Portals in the Palace!
- Robot gets slightly less drops from eating Golden Weapons now.
- You'll no longer find the Golden Revolver on loops!
Fixes - Robot's Regurgitate should now work as intended.
- Fixed a problem with the ambience track in the menu.
- Steroids doesn't have Stress by default on their secondary weapon anymore.
- Weapon Chests on the same level should've stopped dropping the same weapon.
- Fixed a problem with the Ultra Shovel HUD icon.
- Fixed the sprite origin of the Hyper Rifle and Plasma Minigun.
- Fixed a crash related to the Sewers loop boss.
- Hopefully fixed the early portal bug Big Dog has.
- Fixed the description for Plant's Throne Butt.
Misc - Tweaked the way mutations look on the HUD.
- Ultra weapons now have green outlines on the HUD.
It's good to be back!
Update #59 - Little bit of balancing - Weekend of January 10th
It's still early in the new year, and the honest truth is we're all kind of struggling to get back into the flow. Some of us took a well-earned holiday, or are still on holiday, before things really start going crazy again. That means that this week, last week and next week are still going to be relatively quiet. It's some fixes, some balancing and the first Ultra Mutation icons.
- Features
- First batch of Ultra Mutation icons!
- The ridiculous Plasma Minigun.
- Improved sounds for the bullet weapons. Still a test!
Balancing - More Hammerhead range.
- Slightly more slug damage.
- Y.V.'s Throne Butt now reloads faster.
- Plant's Throne Butt now requires enemy health to be slightly lower.
Fixes - Stress now works with Steroids' seconday weapon.
- Fixed a glitch with the Golden Laser Pistol HUD icon.
- Possibly fixed a problem with no portals spawning.
- Possibly stopped Scorpions from glitching into walls.
- Total Recall no longer stacks Rhino Skin, Eagle Eyes, Back Muscle & Extra Feet.
Misc - 3D sound should sound slightly better. This is very much a continuous work in progress.
- Rogue now gets a popup when picking up Portal Strike ammo.
- Super Toxic Fro-oh who are we kidding nobody calls them that anymore-Super Ballguys now blow up walls when destroyed.
We're not sure if with how the team is spread out next week, we'll be able to hit any update at all. After that, we're getting everybody back together and back in the groove. Please accept our apologies there, we're just human and need some holidays too, every now and then.
As a quick note, the results for the giveaway are in. Thank you so much for all your support in growing the Nuclear Throne community. We've hit the highest consecutive amount of players, the highest sales spike since launch and gotten a veritable torrent of new feedback. It's everything we hoped for and more, and we've got you all to thank for that.
Have fun!