SMELTER Ties Two Genres Together While Never Forgetting Their Roots — GeekTyrant

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.