Nuke Them All puts you in control of a red robot army against a blue one. Your objective is to destroy the blue army’s base using your own red troops and arsenal. Unfortunately, the game feels like it was meant for Newgrounds decades ago and doesn’t give you a lot of reason to continue playing.
I Am Commander Red… I Think
The tutorial is simple and introduces you to gathering your troops and fighting the blue army. The issue comes from trying to understand what units do and what having a base really means. The tutorial doesn’t do very much to help you understand.
From there, the bigger issue is that it feels like everything you do to try and help your army does little. It doesn’t feel like anything changes even when you upgrade bases. You upgrade by double-clicking a building and the process plays out. When that’s done, you aren’t told or shown what you get from upgrading, what you spend, or even the requirements to upgrade. I never felt like I was at a strategic advantage by upgrading.
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That expands to your army. You get so little information about how units are made or what boosts capturing flags give that you’re really just guessing. Soon after starting, you’ll see that your units die so quickly, even at the easiest modes. This is because the AI knows exactly what to do and how to do it. I found myself using units as canon fodder as I launched nukes at the enemy bases just to win.
This could be easier if the AI was better on your side. Units tendto use proper pathfinding. If a fence is in your way, you have to direct them near the fence, not at it, or they won’t destroy it or attempt to get close.
It feels less like you are in control of the armies and more like you are suggesting what needs to happen. I’ve played this game a lot, and I still don’t really get how it all works, and I really don’t care to since it wasn’t fun.
It Looks As Terrible As It Plays
The units look okay, but the background doesn’t match. It looks like two completely different art styles were used for both, and neither looks good in the game. This is what I’d expect to see in an old flash site for a company like Kellogg’s to market to kids through games or something from Armor Games or Newgrounds that never took off.
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This would be passable if the game was made decades ago. Today, it just looks like something unearthed from a flash game in the 2000s and not in a good way. The map feels scattered instead of helpful. The fact that the units and map don’t match really hurt the game on top of its clunky controls.
Unfortunately, the game also crashed a lot, despite the fact that my PC is great. I can play most games at the highest graphics level, but for some reason, I experienced multiple crashes in Nuke Them All. The worst part was that I experienced these issues right at the end of a level and when I was nuking the computer.
In other words, the game’s namesake caused the game to break. This is equivalent to Civilization crashing if your civilization reaches a certain number. You don’t expect it to happen because it should have been tested multiple times.
The Sandbox Was Actually Fun
There is a mode in the game called Sandbox, and it just lets you do whatever you want. You can put down teams from both sides and the enemies that attack both of you. You control weather elements, aliens, and the placement of buildings. It’s like a sandbox that every game should have. I had a ton of fun setting up scenarios and waging war with these two armies. I also liked the power of sending out rockets and nukes whenever I felt like it.
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Sure, this mode isn’t the main reason you play the game and is more of just a feature added in, but it’s a smart one to add. It does way more than the tutorial to show you how to play the game. I did not have much fun playing the campaign mode, but I did have a lot of fun playing the sandbox mode.
That is objective, as I know a lot of people don’t like playing modes with no objectives attached, but I’m the same way and loved this. Everything was easy to find and understand, and it was legitimately something I wish more games did. I recommend the sandbox mode to anyone who plays the game.
Clutter Is Not Gameplay
It feels like the developers tried to compensate for how little you could do in the game by cluttering the screen. There’s a lot of stuff around the maps, but every battle is pretty small when you consider how little you need to fight battles. You have a handful of robots to send over to fight because they die quickly in these small-scale battles. The bases are half a foot away from each other on the screen, and each map is maybe a little bigger than my monitor.
I found scrolling to be something I’d do just to focus more, but each map is very small. They’re so small because there’s not much to do. What’s worse is that when you beat a map, you have to press a button to scroll to the next one, which is just weird. I found myself happy to finish each session because I didn’t like the game at all.
The game doesn’t belong on Steam. It’s a glorified flash game that is trying to look like a regular game. This one feels a lot like a practice session sent to Steam to earn money. It’s not worth your money and should have been considered a learning experience for the developer. I don’t recommend it to anyone, and I think you should wait for the next game from the studio.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Sandbox is fun and lets you do a lot | Crashes multiple times |
| Uninventive and repetitive gameplay | |
| Does not feel like a lot of player agency |
Rating: 3/10
GamesHorizon received a Review Copy for Steam.
