Melt Them All is a top down survival shooter, with elements of crafting and resource gathering. The catch is, the resource you gather is the same as what you are killing.
In Melt Them All there are a number of planets you can travel too. Once you land, you are almost immediately stalked by that planet’s lifeforms. After you clear the first wave, you are given a choice of three upgrades as well as a chance to start crafting the tools you need to further your survival. Then it’s on to the next wave.
Ore What?
The gameplay loop of Melt Them All isn’t the most exciting thing you’re going to play. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. I don’t have a great mind for building structures in a smart way that will make the game easier for me. But I’m pretty good at blasting aliens and staying alive. And staying alive is the name of the game.
When you first land, you are able to build four different structures. A smelter, a power station, a conveyor belt, and a spike trap. The ore you collect with your minecart that follows you around is deposited in the smelter. Then the smelter burns the ore and sends that energy to the power station. The power station, according to the Steam store page, is what keeps the lights on back home, making this a humanitarian mission.
The longer you survive, the more traps you are able to unlock, as well as other tools that make your survival easier. You can unlock a drill that will mine the aliens for you. You can also unlock a crusher that you can deposit dead bodies into to turn into ore.
Less Automatons, More Automation
If you’re unlike me, and are a smart person, then you can figure out ways to make your traps do your work for you. By using the conveyor belts, you can redirect the ore directly to the smelters. You can go one step further and have the crushers turn the alien bodies into ore, that is then dropped on a conveyor and sent to the smelter. Or you can make it so you don’t have to a single thing. You could ostensibly set it up to have conveyor belts send aliens into spike traps. Then they are dropped onto another conveyor that leads to the crusher. Which leads to another conveyor system that leads to the smelter. Which then powers the power station. And that makes everyone back on earth happy.
I was not able to figure that out for myself, but I can see where it would be possible. You just have to be better at planning. In my head, there is no end game to Melt Them All, but I think I’m wrong about that. I think the end game is actually that you are able to fully automate your power creation, until you exhaust the resources from an entire planet. Then you move on to the next planet. The reason I never reached that point is because after an hour and a half of play, I was still relying on blasting the aliens myself and dragging my little minecart to deposit ore manually.
There are a number of planets to choose from when you first start your game, each with their own number of resources. The first planet has 430 million resources. Needless to say I didn’t get anywhere close to harvesting that many resources and each planet just goes up from there.
What’s Next?
I think Melt Them All is a game I will come back to. I could see it very much being a rainy day, cozy game. I’m talking hot chocolate, peanut butter crackers, and the entire day with nothing to do but play games and exhaust entire planets of all their resources. On the Steam store page, the creator says that if there is interest, they will add controller support and meta progression. So it’s good to know that it’s not a dead game and there is the potential for more down the road.
As it stands, it’s totally worth the $2. It’s got some very appealing pixel graphics, and the soundtrack slaps. The gameplay is satisfying and if you’re into games like Factorio, then Melt Them All is very much a game for you, at a much cheaper price point.
I did shoot another short video for this week, but I will say up front, I’m currently a little under the weather so there are some sniffles I did my best to edit out. Nothing I can do about my voice though. :/ Enjoy!