A little while ago, I was watching a Nuclear Throne stream on Twitch. Turns out, Vlambeer (producer of said game) was watching. Eventually, I got permission from Vlambeer to create a board game based off of Nuclear Throne (obviously non-profit... that'd be discussed if I ever intended to actually produce a game).
Even further back, I had posted on here an idea for a Nuclear Throne style game. Back then, I was struggling because I wanted to make it like a dungeon crawl, with tiles allowing for randomly generated huge maps, lots of monsters and enemies, etc. I was way over my head!
Since then, I've had time to reflect. What if my game wasn't Nuclear Throne, but Nuclear Arena? If you have heard of the board game Frag, you would have an idea. What I want to do is have 3 double sided boards with 6 different environments. Each side of the board would be a different map. Each of the maps would support a different mode: Wasteland Kings, Capture the Skull, King of the Throne, and Bounty Hunter. (Free-for-all, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, and kill-a-player)
It would support up to 4 players, with each player picking a character to play. The most common and easy mode to play is Wasteland Kings (free-for-all). Each player grabs their character sheet, and then sets them up on a map. Gameplay is essentially an FPS, but fast paced and crazy fun! If you move over a red chest space, you get a card from the loot deck. The loot deck holds a bunch of random awesome weapons like Quadruple Machinegun, Flak Cannon, Toxic Bow, Nuke Launcher, Lightning Rifle, Screwdriver, etc. Move over a yellow chest space, and you get a pickup card, which have health, ammo, shields, and radiation. Killing an enemy causes them to drop their weapons on their death spot, and gives you a large amount of radiation. Once you gain enough radiation, you can trade it in for a mutation from the mutation deck, which has cards that give you cool perks and abilities.
One of the problems I felt Frag had was that it felt a little shallow after reading the rules. With this, each character has a passive and active ability, gameplay is more fast paced, you've got way more weapons, and mutations to gather. Plus, maps have interactive parts, like explosive barrels, acid, and turrets you can use. Plus there's the variety of modes to play!
Components wise, it wouldn't be too much either. You'd have 11 basic character models plus their sheet, a weapon deck, pickup deck, mutation deck, dice, tokens, and the boards.
I'm actually working on making a prototype right now!
I hope that this will be a fast paced fun arena-style game.
I'm open to feedback!
