While the strategy genre on Switch does have some great games in it, the breadth of choices is certainly more on the limited side. What’s great about that is how it affords a window of opportunity for new titles to connect with people, but one downside is that there are absolutely some very strong titles already around, so you really can’t come to the table with anything half-baked.

Thermonuclear at least makes an attempt to stand out and deliver some decent play on a budget, though I’d argue it doesn’t do itself too many favors when you get started. It does try to provide rudimentary information on how to move and attack, but overall I spent a number of runs still feeling quite lost, and forced to make some leap of faith assumptions, as well as patient observations, to understand some aspects of play. Mind you, I’m not talking about nuanced or advanced tactics, I’m merely talking about how to execute some of the attacks properly, how to manage your abilities correctly, and just some vital underlying rules for how you and your foes will interact with specific tiles.

The result is, at best, a pretty uneven experience, especially when contrasted with other strategy games I’ve played on the system that are more complex and nuanced, yet were still better explained and easier to get rolling with by a fair margin. For more challenging strategy, implemented incredibly well, Into the Breach comes to mind, and in terms of turn-based roguelike strategy, The Land Beneath Us has very similar but far stronger play. Given that neither are terribly expensive, and both are clearly more refined to play and enjoy, that makes the effort behind Thermonuclear very hard to recommend by comparison.