A week or so ago on our Discord, I pondered, weak and weary, over Valmbeer’s relative quiet ever since Nuclear Throne came out of early access in December 2015. Well, call me clairvoyant because in a surprise move at PAX West, the studio showed off their new bullet-hell shooter to celebrate eight years of developing games together.
The currently untitled game was playable on the show floor and from the photos had a very simple control scheme. You move with the arrow keys and shoot with X, simple right? The complexity comes in the enemy spawning mechanic. When you kill an enemy, it leaves behind residue on the ground, the residue will sit there until you move too far away from it, at which point the residue will spawn even more enemies. Seems like a nice incentive to keep you from running backwards constantly at the edges of the screen.
In an interview with IGN’s Tom Marks, Rami Ismail described the game as “inverted space invaders, where you start with one enemy and as you destroy those enemies they split into more and more enemies.” Ismail also stated, “you will die, it’s just how high can you get your score before you do?” There was also mention of possibly implementing a progression system with unlockables such as new ships or weapons that were not in the surprise release build.
Source: Destructoid Nuclear Throne developer Vlambeer shows off their new bullet hell to celebrate eighth birthday