We're finally allowed to announce what we've all been so ridiculously busy with - we have just launched Nuclear Throne on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita at the PlayStation Experience in San Francisco. The entire team is here, and we hope to be able to do a livestream somewhere later today, if we can find a place with good internet. Keep track of our Twitter (@Vlambeer) to see if that works out!
That means we're also changing the status of Nuclear Throne on Steam to 'released'. As we promised, the game will launch at a pricepoint of $11,99 without any discount or sales, continuing our stance of not discounting the game during Early Access. We also want to emphasize that this release doesn't mean that no more updates will happen. It's a formality we had to get out of the way, and we're aware of the issues and problems on PC. We're working to fix those.
Much of the work that we did on the PlayStation version also indirectly benefits the PC version, like performance optimalisations and improved controller support. Sadly, every time we pushed an update for PC, something would've just broken. We're going to solve those issues as soon as we can, and although 96 was supposed to launch this past week, it seems that now PlayStation's pressure is out of the week, early next week is super doable.
I've been writing a small press release, but halfway through I realized I wrote it as if I was writing an announcement post to you all. So instead of sending this as a press release, I'm posting it here with some minor tweaks.
Today, we're celebrating the launch of Nuclear Throne - a game that has been in Early Access on Steam for the past two and a half years, enjoying 95 weekly updates and two development livestreams a week. It has, to date, sold over 150,000 copies on PC, Mac and Linux. During its development, you've directly helped popularize the idea of livestreaming commercial game development on livestreaming service Twitch (which has since introduced a ‘creative’ subcategory), and Nuclear Throne became the first game ever available for sale through subscription to a channel on the service.
During the interviews we've been having for launch, the one thing that kept coming up was how Nuclear Throne is well-regarded for its supportive community, and your constructive, considerate and helpful attitude. Not only did you create a lively forum, you also hosted expanded leaderboards, weekly contests, a fan-Wiki and even weekly update videos for the game. Before the game reached this ‘launch’, Nuclear Throne had a fan-organized world championship and unofficial mods. Without the community, we wouldn’t have been able to make the game into what it is today.
We’re also extremely proud of what we’ve achieved with the game itself. Nuclear Throne’s unique blend of fast action and roguelike gameplay has already coined the term ‘Thronelikes’ – games like Enter The Gungeon and Downwell have taken inspiration from the game and made beautiful new games that we love to play. We introduced the idea of ‘Weeklies’, a subversive variant of daily shared challenges that are infinitely replayable for practice during the weekend. Most of all, we’re proud of the gameplay, the world and our mutant heroes and foes: we’ll miss Fish and Crystal and the rest of the mutants.
It’s going to be really strange to wrap up on Nuclear Throne. For the past 33 months, every week for the two of us at Vlambeer and the four freelancers we worked with, we’ve had a very consistent schedule. On Monday, we read feedback and made a plan, on Tuesday we’d livestream, on Wednesday, we’d work, on Thursday we’d livestream, on Friday we’d wrap up, on Saturday we’d release an update and we’d hotfix the build or sleep on Sunday. We’d absorb the feedback and community enthusiasm and immediately repeat the cycle. We’ve become good friends with many people in the community, and we hope that they’ll stick around for the future.
For us, life will feel strangely empty for a while without that constant loop at the top of our mind. It’s a very bittersweet moment, and we hope we’ve done the community proud. They have given us a lot, and we hope we’ve repaid their trust and time and patience.
As for what’s next for Vlambeer, it’s hard to tell right this moment. We’re going to support Nuclear Throne for a bit, as we’d like to see how the game performs on PlayStation platforms, and see if there are any outstanding issues on the PC version. We also feel like we should take a break and revisit our earlier projects and see if they require some polish, touchups, updates or re-releases. Nuclear Throne was by far our biggest and most intensive project, but our goal was never to make ‘bigger’ games. Our goal is to make better games. We’ve learned a lot making our first roguelike, the first game we’ve made with the sheer scope and size of Nuclear Throne, and we’re eager to find out how that new knowledge applies to future –probably somewhat smaller- projects for the foreseeable future.
As for the team, it’ll eventually be splitting up again. Vlambeer always works with friends and freelancers beyond our two core team members. Paul Veer, the artist who is entirely responsible for the visual style of Nuclear Throne, is going to work on some of his own exciting projects. Joonas Turner, our SFX designer responsible for the explosions and other less important sounds in the game, is already swamped with a dozen new projects. Jukio Kallio, the amazingly talented musician responsible for the soundtrack of Nuclear Throne, will be releasing the Nuclear Throne OST in the nearby future. Finally, promo artist Justin Chan will be continuing studying art. As for me, I’ll be keeping track of Nuclear Throne’s community and working on addressing any issues the influx of new players might bring. For what it’s worth, Vlambeer designer J.W. has already been pitching new game ideas.
For now, we’re going to take a nap, and then back to work. We'll chat to you soon.