It's a murderously fast and brutal game - a rougelike that can extinguish all your hard-won progress in mere moments if you spawn surrounded by dog guardians, run out of ammo at a critical point, or suffer an exploding car to the face while trying to exit the level. I wasn't sure whether she'd take to Nuclear Throne. spent a week in quarantine at Flu Camp, we played Risk of Rain, which she liked, and a very small amount of Borderlands 2, which she hated. It's hard to remember exactly when Nuclear Throne became our go-to couch co-op game, but it's certainly been that way for most of the time we've been going out.

Nuclear Throne's mutants speak 'Trashtalk', a simple language invented by sound designer Joonas Turner. and I have been seeing each other around the same time Nuclear Throne came out. That birthday cake was made for me by A., also a keen Nuclear Throne player - and here's where the playing experience interweaves almost inextricably with the personal. Such moments, like my Nuclear Throne birthday cake, are effectively gone forever. We've been treated to throwaway tems and features like an FPS mode and the Party Gun, which permitted players to litter the harsh desert terrain with coloured streamers in celebration of Nuclear Throne's first anniversary. I remember this well, because at one point I found myself simultaneously splattering a rat in the game and barking at its smaller cousin on my bookshelf. Where were you when they added 'pure energy being' Horror to the roster as both an enemy and a secret character? Funny you should ask I was dealing with a mouse infestation and living in a room not dissimilar in atmosphere to Nuclear Throne's sewer stage - but with unpacked boxes instead of toxic barrels. All the more so when the fixes and updates, buffs and embellishments seem to act as a kind of parallel to the often-tumultuous shifts of direction in your own life - a monster-strewn, post-apocalyptic mirror world. Watching an Early Access game evolve over time is a strange, changeable, exhilarating experience.

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