Nuclear Throne developer Vlambeer shows off their new bullet hell to celebrate eighth birthday

Back to their roots

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.

Speaking also on their quiet in the post-Nuclear Throne launch years, Ismail said that they as a studio were used to making “six games a year” so to spend almost two straight years on one game was different and a bit exhausting for the team at Vlambeer. So they took some time off and looked at fan desires, ultimately deciding to return to the smaller arcade shooters that they first got into game development for.

So, when can those who weren’t at PAX West this weekend get to play Untitled Residue Shooter? “Soonish” is the word from Rami Ismail. No word either on the platforms the game will eventually be available for but I can almost guarantee PC, any others platforms we will have to wait and see.

Vlambeer surprise reveal at PAX West 2018 [IGN]