Friday, October 30Every game with a new puzzle each dayToday's colour: Rust
Daily Games to Play
Filters1

Filter the games

Your choice stays on as you move around the site, until you clear it.

Where you play
Kind of puzzle
26 more
Price
Time to play
Players
New puzzle at
Extras

Your filters leave this game out of every list.

Clear filters

Nuclear Throne

Rate it

One run a day through the wasteland, ranked by how many you kill.

Play Nuclear Throne

on store.steampowered.com

Nuclear Throne gameplay: a top-down desert level where the player aims a laser sight at bandits and a scorpion, with health and ammo shown at the top left

Nuclear Throne is Vlambeer's top-down roguelike shooter about mutants fighting toward the throne. Its daily run gives everyone the same seed and one try with a plain start, and the leaderboard is decided by kills rather than distance.

About Nuclear Throne

Nuclear Throne is a top-down roguelike shooter by Vlambeer, released in 2015 after a long early access period. The world is a wasteland after humanity has died out, and you play one of a cast of mutants fighting through areas full of bandits, maggots and worse, picking up weapons and choosing a new mutation each time you level up. Runs are fast and deaths are frequent.

The daily run is one of the game's two ranked modes. At 0:00 UTC a new seed is chosen and every player gets the same run. You pick a character, but the start is always plain: the default weapon, no golden weapons, no crown chosen at the start. You get one chance, the restart option is removed, and a calendar icon in the corner shows you are in a daily. The winner is whoever kills the most, not whoever goes furthest.

The daily leaderboards are run on Vlambeer's servers and archived by the volunteer site Thronebutt, which shows each player's mutant, where they died and their kill count. The mode is available in the Steam, PlayStation 4 and Vita, Switch and Xbox versions; the Switch and Xbox ports came out in 2019 and 2021. It suits players who enjoy short, intense runs and a daily score to beat.

How to play Nuclear Throne

  1. Choose Daily from the game's modes; a calendar icon appears in the corner of the screen.
  2. Pick a mutant; you start with its default weapon and no crown.
  3. Clear each area of enemies, collect ammunition and radiation, and choose a mutation when you level up.
  4. Keep going as long as you can: every kill counts toward your score.
  5. When you die, your kill count is posted to the day's leaderboard.

Screenshots

Nuclear Throne key art from its Steam page
Nuclear Throne: the character select screen, mutants around a campfire with Y.V. and the line 3 weapons
Nuclear Throne: a mutant firing a yellow laser at snow wolves in a frozen city level

Tips

  • The score is kills, not distance, so clearing every enemy matters more than rushing to the exit.
  • Crowns that raise enemy numbers, such as the Crown of Blood, are worth more in a daily than in a normal run.
  • Kills after you die are not counted, so do not rely on explosions finishing enemies after you fall.

Questions

When does the Nuclear Throne daily reset?

Every day at 0:00 UTC, when a new seed is chosen and the leaderboard starts over.

How many tries do I get?

One. Weekly runs can be replayed, but the daily is a single attempt.

Where can I see past daily results?

Thronebutt, a volunteer leaderboard site, archives the daily and weekly leaderboards on Steam.

Ratings and reviews

Your rating of Nuclear Throne

No account needed. Reviews show once they have been checked. Privacy

More daily runs in video games