Review: SMELTER Ties Two Genres Together While Never Forgetting Their Roots

Smelter is a game that mixes genres and introduces new spins on old concepts and challenges as well as entertains. Dangen Entertainment is an indie developer that has quite a few titles under its belt, and Smelter is another great addition to the line-up. Between a unique real-time strategy game half and a sidescrolling platformer other half, this game offers a lot of content, variety, and challenge.

Smelter’s story takes Eve (from Adam and Eve) and throws her into a new world of ancient powers, kingdoms, and wars. As she is looking for Adam, she finds Smelter, a mask-like creature that can attach himself to her and give her all sorts of powers (as well as some questionable armor). Smelter has been away from its kingdom for a long time, and so players are also working on strategically riding the world of creatures and establishing Smelter’s kingdom. The story isn’t terribly complicated, but the writing for it is quite witty and entertaining. At times, I felt the story drift away from Eve entirely, but things do balance out well enough, and overall, there was a more engaging story than I expected.

Platforming games need to move at a strong pace, have interesting gimmicks, powers, or movements to keep things fresh and fun. Smelter has plenty of that. Players will slowly unlock more and more abilities, types of dodges, attacks, and interactions that, in turn, make every level feel new. Not only that, but players will unlock three elements that have their own unique sets of movements and attacks. Players will have to be smart and quick to change between the elements while playing through a level and use appropriate actions to finish the levels and beat bosses. I was also impressed with the gradual increase in difficulty. Levels demand more thoughtfulness and sharper skills from its players as they obtain more abilities and progress through the story.

Now, the hardest to describe aspect of the game: the strategy section. Players will control a flying Smelter and have to fight bad creatures until an area is in control or a certain objective is completed. But it isn’t just floating around attack creatures, players can control sections of the map, build housing for warriors and workers that become a semi-automatic army that help defend or expand Smelter’s area. At first, it is a bit chaotic, but the balance of the building, assigning and attacking make for an engaging real-time strategy experience that I haven’t seen anywhere else. I did find some of the missions in this section to be a bit tedious or drag on a bit longer than necessary, but I was enjoying the battles a lot more than wasn’t.

Smelter is one of those games that shake up the normal formula. Considering the awesome platforming, unique approach of strategy gameplay, oddly entertaining story, and more, there is a lot to like in Smelter. But this game takes some dedication, it won’t come easily to most. And the aesthetics, while beautiful in their own way, can be a bit lackluster to some players. This game won’t be for everyone, but those who it is for will absolutely fall in love with it.