Tough Nuts is a physics slingshot game for the Amiga 1200 (AGA) in the spirit of Angry Birds, with a world of its own: nuts knock bark beetles out of their forts. Nine worlds of ten levels, nine heroes with abilities of their own, bosses, cartoons and ten tunes — on two floppies or on a hard disk.
About the game
The nuts lived under the Great Oak until the bark beetles came, led by the stag beetle: they gnawed the Oak's bark and built forts, and the Oak withered. But an acorn fell on a forked twig and so invented the slingshot. The stag threatened them with the beetles of every land and the Bombardier of the fiery mountain, and the nuts set off: across the first ice and the stone ridge, the summer garden and the canyon, the jungle, the crystal cave and the night forest. What waits for them on the fiery mountain, you will see for yourself.
Pull the hero in the sling back, aim along the arc and let go. Forts of wood, ice, stone, clay, sandstone, bamboo and crystal fall the way physics makes them, each material with its own weight, strength and sound. Every hero does something of its own at a click in flight. The fewer heroes a level takes, the more points and stars; beat the boss and win 20 of a world's 30 stars, and the next world opens.
In the game
- Nine worlds, 90 levels. The Autumn Grove, First Ice, Stone Ridge, the Summer Garden, the Canyon, the Jungle, the Crystal Cave, the Night Forest and the Volcano, each with its own scenery, its own ground under the levels and its own tune.
- Nine heroes. The acorn; the hazelnuts split into three; the chestnut dashes and breaks through wood; the walnut grows four times heavier and drops like a stone; the cone blows up and throws pine nuts all round; the peanut's pod opens, one kernel flying up, the other down; the pistachio's kernel flies where you click; the coconut drops straight down and splits; the almond flies straight where you click, through crystal.
- Bosses. Each world ends with a boss of its own, from the stag beetle to the Bombardier of the fiery mountain.
- Physics and surprises. Toadstools that blow up, boulders and pumpkins that roll and crush, pots that break, cacti that prick, liana trampolines, stalactites that drop, and the fire of a broken lantern running along the wooden blocks.
- "The Great Oak" cartoons. Cut-out figures: the backstory before the first level and the finale after the last boss.
- Pixel art. The nuts and the beetles pull faces, blows throw splinters, ice shards and stone chips; leaves fall in the grove, snow on the ice, fireflies blink in the night forest.
- Sound. Ten tunes, from a jig in the grove to the final march; every material has its own sound of a blow; squeaky voices of the heroes and the beetles.
- Two languages. English and Russian, switched in Settings.
- Saving. The progress and the best scores are saved on the floppy or next to the program.
Screenshots
System requirements
- An AGA Amiga (A1200, A4000) with a 68020 or better.
- Kickstart 3.0 or later.
- 2 MB of chip RAM (about 1.7 MB of it free). Fast RAM is not needed: with it big collapses run smoother and a world already visited loads at once, without the floppy.
- A mouse.
- A monitor that takes PAL 50 Hz: the game always runs in PAL, on an NTSC machine too.
- With a 68060 start the game from Workbench: it needs the 68060.library.
- An emulator: WinUAE or FS-UAE as an A1200 (68EC020, AGA, 2 MB of chip RAM, Kickstart 3.x).
Version 0.24 was tested in the FS-UAE emulator: a bare A1200 (Kickstart 3.1 and the AROS ROM), an A1200 with fast RAM, started from the floppies and from Workbench 3.1. Early versions were tested on a real A1200 and in WinUAE too.
Download
Version 0.24 (19.10.2026). Both are the same game: take the one that suits you.
Floppies (ADF): for an emulator or real floppies
Two floppies in a ZIP archive. Floppy 1 boots: insert it into DF0: and switch on; floppy 2 into DF1:, then no swapping; with one drive the game asks for floppy 2 itself. No Workbench needed. The images can be written to real floppies (Greaseweazle, ADF-Copy and the like). Do not write-protect the floppies: the progress is saved on them.
Download the floppies — ZIP, 0.8 MB
For Workbench (LHA): for a hard disk
Extract the archive to a hard disk, for example lha x nuts_v0.24_wb.lha Work:, open the drawer "Nuts" and double-click the game. Keep the drawer data next to the program; the progress is saved there too, in nuts.dat. If the Shell says "file is not executable", type Protect nuts +e. On a machine without fast RAM, with Workbench loaded, the memory may run short: then boot from the floppies.
Download for Workbench — LHA, 0.8 MB
Donate
If you enjoy the game, you can support its development — thank you!
On itch.io you can download the game and pay what you want, by card or PayPal.
Or in crypto:
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Controls
- Shoot: point at the hero in the sling, press the left mouse button, pull back, let go.
- The hero's ability: a click in flight, once a shot.
- Move the view: drag the background.
- Pause: the ❚❚ button top left, the right button, Esc or P. Restart the level: R.
- Menus: the mouse; Esc or the right button go back, Return goes on. Help (how to play, the heroes): the Help key.
A game by © Nero Games, 2026.