Smelter Review Summary

Tight action-platforming and creative boss fights with outstanding audio are marred by clunky controls, unfair cheap deaths, and persistent game-breaking bugs.

Tight action-platforming gameplay: The action-platforming gameplay is tight, challenging, and well-crafted, with smooth controls and level design that feels inspired by Mega Man X. The blend with RTS elements is appreciated by many players.

Outstanding audio quality: Players consistently praise the game's audio, highlighting the soundtrack, sound effects, and music as excellent, catchy, and varied. The audio quality is a major positive point across multiple clusters.

Funny and enjoyable experience: The game is described as funny, charming, and enjoyable to play, with humor being a core part of its appeal. Players find it a pleasant and fun experience overall.

Excellent and creative boss fights: Boss fights are well-structured, creative, and offer fun challenges that require strategic thinking. Most players find them excellent and engaging.

Well-designed level progression: Level design is consistently interesting and well-balanced, with a good difficulty progression that keeps players engaged.

Controls are clunky and unresponsive: Many players report that the controls feel stiff, clunky, or unresponsive, with issues in dashing, wall climbing, and input recognition. This impacts platforming and combat enjoyment significantly.

Trials are too hard and required: The trial or challenge levels are widely regarded as excessively difficult, often requiring perfection and causing frustration. Many players feel these trials are required for upgrades but are not fun.

High and unfair difficulty with cheap deaths: The game has numerous unfair difficulty spikes, cheap deaths, and one-hit kills, especially in later stages. Many players feel the game requires perfection and becomes rage-inducing.

Strategy mode is shallow and tedious: The strategy/RTS mode is seen as shallow, tedious, or poorly integrated, with few building types and repetitive gameplay. It is often criticized as a tacked-on element.

Frustrating platforming with instant death traps: Platforming sections, especially later ones, are frustrating due to tight timing, instant death traps, and imprecise controls. Many players find the platforming punishing rather than fun.

Platformer-RTS hybrid game: The game is frequently described as a hybrid of 2D platforming and real-time strategy or tower defense mechanics. Players engage in action-platformer combat in one mode and manage base building or territory in another.

Mega Man X inspired platforming: Many reviews compare the platforming gameplay to Mega Man X or Mega Man Zero, citing similar controls, level design, and exploration. The game also evokes ActRaiser and Demon's Crest.

Tower defense base building: A distinct secondary mode involves tower defense and base building from a top-down perspective. Players defend their structures from enemy waves and manage resources.

ActRaiser-style city building: The city-building or territory management phase is consistently compared to ActRaiser. Players manage an overworld, build structures, and make strategic decisions between platforming segments.

Three armor form system: The player can switch between three armor variants, each with unique attacks, abilities, and handling. This provides significant power-up variety and strategic depth.

Smooth and fast experience: Players report a stable gameplay experience with no performance issues, short loading times, and quick boss respawning. This performance was achieved on a variety of hardware configurations including Linux via Proton.

Recommended for classic platformer fans: The game is strongly recommended for players who enjoy classic 2D action platformers and Metroidvania games, especially those who appreciate challenges similar to Mega Man, Castlevania, or Actraiser.

Not recommended by many: A notable number of reviews do not recommend the game, citing various issues such as bugs, design flaws, or overall dissatisfaction without detailed explanations.

General positive recommendations: Multiple reviews express general positive recommendations without specific conditions, indicating overall satisfaction with the game is common among reviewers.

Mixed views on RTS elements: The game uniquely blends action platforming with real-time strategy (RTS) and base-building elements, which is praised by some but may not appeal to players who dislike strategy components.

Gamebreaking bugs present: A subset of negative feedback is attributed to major bugs and technical issues, suggesting that the game may not yet be in a polished state for full recommendation.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $16.00.

Story completion: 13.0h.

The game suffers from a lengthy and overbearing tutorial that makes the first few hours slow and tedious, but once past that, the platforming and empire-building loop become satisfying and fun for most players.

Reported time to anchor: 2h 30m.

Friction: long overbearing tutorial with unskippable dialogue; slow pacing in the first few hours; tedious city management early on; confusing or irrelevant tutorial instructions; forced to build inadequate defenses in tutorial.

Unlock drivers: finishing the tutorial; accessing real platforming missions; understanding the strategic loop between city management and action; progression system introducing fresh mechanics.

Retro Platformer Enthusiast: Precision platforming, memorization, seeking fair but tough challenges. Motivation: Reliving nostalgic platforming experiences with old-school challenge. Stance: buy.

Cautious Critic: They likely engaged with both action and strategy modes, but the issues overshadowed the fun. Motivation: They wanted a polished, enjoyable experience but found the game lacking in key areas. Stance: no buy.

Challenge Seeker: Persistent, methodical, enjoys learning patterns and overcoming tough sections. Motivation: Seeking a demanding platforming experience that tests skill without being unfair. Stance: buy.

Unlock Adam as playable: Players wish for Adam to become playable either after completing the game or through downloadable content.