Nuclear Throne fan expansion adds new areas and parrots

Post-apocaltypic roguelike Nuclear Throne was a blast. Knife-edge dodge rolls, chunky shotguns, playable telekinetic eyeball monsters. It had it all – except clearly a team of modders disagreed. Their homebrewed “Territorial Expansion” came out last week, with enough doo dahs and polish to pass as an official update. There are new areas, enemies, bosses, weapons and characters. Also, pet parrots. Nothing like a pet parrot to lure me back to armageddon.

It’s got a snazzy trailer ‘n all.

Mostly on show there is the beach, a secret area you can reach by “throwing bones at something specific”. I’ve only played for ten minutes so far, and have worked out this isn’t the exit portal. This is a shame, as I’m keen to meet the ducks with hammers. Someone tell me how to reach the ducks with hammers.

The only concretely new creature I’ve met, in fact, has been a sewer rat wearing a gas mask who poisoned me to death. That horrible early tunnels section has been made more horrible. Grand.

I’m not complaining. Part of the reason I haven’t seen much of the new stuff is because I’m rustier than a post-apocalyptic screwdriver, and keep being eaten by terrible scorpions. I’d expect an expansion like this to sprinkle in additions rather than totally change the balance of the opening level. Difficulty is a delicate thing with a punishing roguelike like Nuclear Throne, and I’m intrigued to see how Team Te has handled it.

The mod’s site mentions “merged weapons”, “chest shops” and “bonus pickups” as entirely new features. I couldn’t find more info, but that’s because discovering this stuff for yourself is part of the point.

To play, you’ll need to first grab the Nuclear Throne Together mod, then follow the (simple) instructions here, then grab the Territorial Expansion from here and pop it in your shiny new “mods” folder. You then need to start a game, press T, and type “/load NTTE”. Make sure it’s in the right mods subfolder, and make sure you launch the NuclearThroneTogether.exe rather than the normal game. I made both of these mistakes so you don’t have to.