NUUKD drops Shady Lady into a frozen dystopian laboratory where AI has apparently survived the end of the world and started digging for something called green gold. Babydrills crawl down through the reels, strange canisters pile up across the screen and Mother watches over the whole operation from beneath the ice. It is every bit as weird as the studio’s recent output tends to be.
What makes the game work is not one massive feature, but the loop between the Babydrills, Mystery Reveal Canisters and Mother Meter. Drilling creates more canisters, canisters can be upgraded into stronger rewards and every drilled position pushes the meter toward another modifier. It takes a little time to understand, but once the pieces start feeding into each other, NUUKD becomes much more interesting than its basic payline setup suggests.