The Outlast Trials
The Outlast Trials
Game
Game2026
Meltopia
Developer Garden of Dreams
A minimalist game where you melt snow with a heat cannon to explore a mysterious frozen world. Uncover glacial secrets, collect valuable resources and ancient artifacts — and ultimately find and assemble the remains of an ancient Mammoth. From the Steam store page
304 reactions from 2 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
69
Fresh
193 positive · 88 negative
95% range 63–74%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 193 | 88 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 7 | 1 | 15 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
680 of 847 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
68% recommend · 174 yes, 83 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 257 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (1,526 of 1,780 positive).
Several reviewers criticize the progression, citing a slow and expensive second tool. [1][2][3] Some players report technical issues like bugs, freezes, and poor performance. [4][5][6]
Liked
Representative posts
- [2]
I normally love this kind of thing, but what a massive waste of time. Starts off great but quickly loses momentum with some bad design decisions. The flamethrowing is great and feels fun; it's why people buy the game. Half an hour in, your flamethrower gets replaced with a "Tesla gun", which is a lot slower and a LOT more expensive to upgrade, which you have to use for "blue ice". It makes no sense, and grinds …
- [3]
TL;DR - A great concept completely undone by terrible progression and bafflingly bad choices in level design. Do not buy this game or just refund it before 2 hours. It only gets worse after that. Things feel great at first and the level design feels solid, but the moment you reach the point where you're using the Tesla, the game grinds to a halt. The Tesla is slow and takes forever to upgrade. You never use the …
- [12]
Pretty enjoyable so far! I'm a fan of games like Powerwash Sim and stuff like that- but I will say the game isn't perfect *yet*. However, the game is great for the price that you pay for it, and still quite enjoyable. I hope that the devs continue to update the game based off of feedback! After all, this version is way nicer than the demo i played because of player feedback! Pros -satisfying gameplay -rewarding …
- [7]
If you like melting snow away with a flamethrower, this game is for you. It is oddly satisfying and actually a lot of fun. Its a mix of simulation + slight narrative + collecting artifacts + upgrades without a tedious grind. It took me 8 hours to finish, and thats with max upgrades and all artifacts found, all for $5 so it makes it completely worth it imo. Things they can improve on: - The dynamite blast radius …
- [1]
It is a nice diggin (err melting) game. but it has two fatal flaws: 1. you got only two tools (well 3 but the third one doesn't really count), and as soon as you unlocked the second one, tesla, the first one is never used again as all future walls can only be melted by the tesla. This is very early in the game, and the tesla is way worse than the first tool, at least until you upgraded it very much - but it's …
Summarised from 34 of the 280 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 12, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
68% of the 257 Steam reviewers we collected recommend Meltopia. The complaint that keeps coming up: progression grinds to a halt with the Tesla gun. Deal-breaker or nitpick?
Reactions
60 of 304 · most liked firstDespite sharing some mechanics with your Keep Digging/A Game About Digging a Hole, etc., and indeed adding a couple of interesting mechanics, like a grappling hook, this game just doesn't have the sauce. The assets are all the same marketplace objects you've seen in a hundred other games (Tavern Simulator, Ale & Tale Tavern in particular). The movement is stilted - momentum and acceleration feels wrong. This is particularly noticeable once you get the grappling hook. It just feels…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I normally love this kind of thing, but what a massive waste of time. Starts off great but quickly loses momentum with some bad design decisions. The flamethrowing is great and feels fun; it's why people buy the game. Half an hour in, your flamethrower gets replaced with a "Tesla gun", which is a lot slower and a LOT more expensive to upgrade, which you have to use for "blue ice". It makes no sense, and grinds progression to a halt. It's less fun, and is the only new weapon in the game that…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What I liked: the intro was funny to me, the animations for upgrading the meltgun and the teslagun were really good, removing the snow felt pretty good, the two different kinds of snow was interesting as well, the grapple hook was fun to use, and collecting the ice cubes to melt helped with feeling goal oriented. I also liked the sudden shifts from snow cave to stone room. I liked the details in the main room with all the books, potions, and even swords behind doors. I adored the transition of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was having a ton of fun, played for 90 minutes, saved, took a nap. Came back and my secondary gun is GONE, its not where you find it and now I cant progress in the game.....what the ♥♥♥♥. On top of that, once you get the secondary, its upgrades are SO EXPENSIVE it immediately makes the game progress slow x10, oh yay new thing, oh no I get to melt for 10-15 seconds then I have to spend 1+ minute running back to refuel.....if you don't want to read comments, it's also absolutely stupid that I…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TL;DR - A great concept completely undone by terrible progression and bafflingly bad choices in level design. Do not buy this game or just refund it before 2 hours. It only gets worse after that. Things feel great at first and the level design feels solid, but the moment you reach the point where you're using the Tesla, the game grinds to a halt. The Tesla is slow and takes forever to upgrade. You never use the flamethrower again and are stuck grinding money to upgrade the Tesla. The third and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Going live in just a minute with some more Meltopia! This was such a fun little game so far. I'm glad my best friend Masque pointed it out to me. 😊 www.twitch.tv/amberwolf_17
positive · AI labelView post →Eh I played it, there's not much to it I'd neutral if there was that option. Story is non-existant, freezes & stutters on saving, known bug where your gun stops working if you freeze to death requiring you to reboot the game. Get it on deep discount and bring a good audiobook to listen to while you play.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →How much of Steam revenue actually reaches an indie dev? Our game Meltopia: $456,945 gross, 89,518 copies sold. We got $263,885, about 57.5%. Taxes ~8.5%, refunds (we budget 9%), then Steam takes 30% of what's left. That's before our own taxes, team, ads and the next game. #gamedev #indiedev
neutral · AI labelView post →Pretty enjoyable so far! I'm a fan of games like Powerwash Sim and stuff like that- but I will say the game isn't perfect *yet*. However, the game is great for the price that you pay for it, and still quite enjoyable. I hope that the devs continue to update the game based off of feedback! After all, this version is way nicer than the demo i played because of player feedback! Pros -satisfying gameplay -rewarding upgrades! upgrading makes playing easier as you go -generally stress free- think…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The beginning is great but then after about 1,5 hours or so you unlock a new tool which completely invalidates your progress thus far effectively making you feel like you are starting from the beginning. You never use the first tool again, the new tool is extremely slow and expensive to upgrade making the game an absolute slog. I would have refunded it but unfortunately I went over the 2h limit.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is exactly what you thought it was. You melt ice, you upgrade your tools to melt ice better, rinse and repeat. If it is your kind of game like A game about digging a hole, you will enjoy.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game have solid start, but the more you play the more bugs you encounter. Had to drop it after I started instantly freezing in 3rd cold tier cave and frozen artifact that I caried dropped underground. Then on second attempt to bring that artifact, after loading save, game decided to save once more and crashed. After that I frozen to death couple more times (instantly, I maxed out warm but still wasn't able to pass that cave) and on top of all that, at some point loot stopped spawning. Also,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Has no settings to reduce motion sickness, which made it unplayable for me. Character movement and camera control is very "slidy". The intro cinematic looks like it was stolen from a mobile ad. I would maybe recommend it if it had more accessibility settings, but for now definitely be wary if you're prone to motion sickness.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a chill game with a simple gameplay loop that doesn't get boring. Looking for various things in the snow actually turned out to be more fun than I thought. Recommended ^_^
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My indie game Meltopia is about melting snow with a heat gun to dig up an ancient mammoth. 50,000+ players bought it in its first month on Steam. Today we're announcing the sequel. And everyone who owns the original gets it for free 🧵 #steam #indiegame #gamedev #game
neutral · AI labelView post →Our game Meltopia on GOG: no miracle, but still our best store outside Steam. 554 copies (5 refunds), $3,748 gross, $2,166.50 net. How much actually reaches our account is still unclear, probably ~70% of that. Would you ship on GOG? #indiedev
neutral · AI labelView post →What a bummer. This game was super relaxing and enjoyable until getting the teslagun. You're forced to use this gun instead of the original flamethrower. The gun is incredibly slow and the tesla upgrades costing way too much combined with slow progress now makes this miserable. This made the game become grindy instead of relaxing. Definitely done playing this game now.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Decently fun, but disrespects your time in a very bad way. So much running back and forth and extreme jumps in price for upgrades. Got to a point where I had to run back and forth earning about 200 for every trip, taking 30 seconds each, when the upgrade to increase my digging efficency was nearly 5000. That's nearly 15 minutes of tedious gameplay for a 20% increase in digging power.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you like melting snow away with a flamethrower, this game is for you. It is oddly satisfying and actually a lot of fun. Its a mix of simulation + slight narrative + collecting artifacts + upgrades without a tedious grind. It took me 8 hours to finish, and thats with max upgrades and all artifacts found, all for $5 so it makes it completely worth it imo. Things they can improve on: - The dynamite blast radius could be bigger. For example, when clearing a large cave, it makes it difficult…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is unplayable after last update. Game locks up after picking second gun.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Easy, very calm and relaxing game. You have to melt ice and snow in order to get through caverns. It comes with a flamethrower, tesla cannon and other tools. As a fire dragon, I enjoyed buring my way through. It is short. Took me under 10h to complete (100%). Good game, if you enjoy the simple game loop.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's short. I kind of expected more puzzles, or really some puzzles, but I enjoyed this game. I bought it for 4 bucks and I'd say I got my money's worth. The achievement for 100% the game didn't fire, and that makes my left eye twitch. EDIT- The final achievement fired when I launched the game again. So. My eye has stopped twitching. If you want to kill a few hours and you got 4 bucks, go for it.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is exactly as you'd expect it. kinda runs like ♥♥♥♥, but regardless of the low frame. it's still got a good enough gameplay look, and is cheap enough for me to be like. yeah that's fun. you can burn like 5-10 hours listening to a podcast or long video essay (I chose a pyrocynical video, inflatable furry man's last vid is 8 hours long lmao) It's basically a horizontal copy of the hole digging game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Once you get the Tesla gun, you need a lot of resilience towards tedious tasks. It slows the game down by a lot and makes it feel like a mobile game. You are pretty much waiting for the "pay 5$ now to increase the speed" popup. If you have a stark resistance towards slow gameplay, this may be for you, otherwise, stay away. Fun is something else.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The slowest gameplay for any game I've played in this genre, reading other reviews it seems like the gameplay doesn't ever progress or get more varied, and you never feel powerful even at the endgame. Gonna refund this one unfortunately. Not to mention this game is weirdly taxing on my computer, and autosaving completely freezes the game for about 5 seconds each time. Janky slop for the most part
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Ok, crashed twice in 30 minutes , crashed HARD. Almost caused a fire. Why ? Because the devs thought it would be a good idea to throw every gfx overkill they could find at it. For a game with the graphics it has, total BS and this needs to be optimized STAT. No more mercy for LAZY DEVS using the easy way.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game's pacing is terrible. Like others have said it's pretty fun at first but once you unluck the second tool that all falls apart. You spent time exploring and upgraded your flamethrower? Well that sucks for you because the next tool is incredibly tedious to use and requires a cray amount to upgrade. Also there is no narrative or really guidance in anyway other than heavy handed visual tutorials (this is a terrible way to unbored players). I have no idea what stove "upgrades" do...
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to like this game, I've played dozens of similar games, but this one is unfortunately not a good execution of the formula. For some reason, the devs decided to make really elaborate and complex tunnels to navigate instead of focusing on the main objective (melting snow mechanics). Progression is paced very poorly and the ice melting mechanics are not that interesting.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The first hour or two is good, then the developers artificially slow down everything in the name of "a new challenge". Lazy design.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is one of those games that would deserve a "Meh" rating if Steam had it. It's a decent game that provides about 6 hours of content for $7. Not terribly priced, though I would recommend getting it on sale if you want it. Meltopia takes the simple digging concept from games like "A Game About Digging a Hole" but instead of digging down, you're digging outward, and instead of dirt, it's snow and ice. You have a freakin' flamethrower and a couple other tools that you can upgrade using money…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game turned out to be super sticky. I didn't expect it to hook me from the very first seconds. The snow melting process is very meditative. There are interesting artifacts and the main mammoth. The graphics and environment are very beautiful. I really enjoyed the game, thank you ♥♥♥
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Robot Model in starting area is clearly AI generated slop, however no AI generated warnings on the Storepage.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a game about melting ice, thats about it. (TLDR, The Dev made a voxel digging system like countless others and thought "my work is done") I do not recommend this for many reasons. in the games current state the Dev is mistaking a "barebone game" with "meditation" lets start with the Base, everything is freezing, and upon seeing furnaces my first thought was "we are gonna have to keep it lit somehow, so some fuel, and perhaps through upgrades it will allow us to unlock stuff" no, it…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is a nice diggin (err melting) game. but it has two fatal flaws: 1. you got only two tools (well 3 but the third one doesn't really count), and as soon as you unlocked the second one, tesla, the first one is never used again as all future walls can only be melted by the tesla. This is very early in the game, and the tesla is way worse than the first tool, at least until you upgraded it very much - but it's upgrades cost a multitude of the first gun upgrades. 2. you do not really get…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A fun little game that takes about 6-7 hours to complete. But, the cutscenes doesn't work with Linux. The tip windows didn't have a picture, and didn't get to see the final cutscene at the end of the game. Hope this will be fixed in the future.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Liked it fine until I ran into the New, Harder Snow that took Flamethrower But Different to melt. It just felt like an arbitrary reset and that's basically what it is. Farewell base tool, I guess upgrading you was all for naught.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I played for just under 2 hours, hoping the gameplay loop would feel a little better as I got more upgrades for the systems in play, but that feeling never came unfortunately. You spend your money upgrading your capacity for your flamethrower so you can get through areas faster, don't need to backtrack as much for tank refills, upgrading your inventory capacity so you can hold more before you need to run back through the maze of tunnels you're not creating, but unearthing because it's all set…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →its okay, it is chill. You end up being able to max everything out quickly and then thats it. Your end game is just finding one or two things. for 6 bucks it was worth the 5 hours
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Do not buy this game.... yet. It's good... but feels early access. I'd recommend waiting for a while before buying this. I know this is a weird thing to type at the start of a yes recommendation for a game, but bare with me here. Despite this game not being "in early access" it is definitely in early access. There's unfinished features, it's buggy, whenever it saves it freezes for a few seconds, there's mention of a co-op mode that doesn't exist yet. The soundtrack is pure excrement. It's…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm sorry but i cannot recommend this game. The balance is so bad even though the game was out on may, we're almost november, so the devs had time to find a better balance in the game. Because you start with a "meltgun" which is like a flamethrower, it goes great, you feel like you're going fast, discovering and upgrading everything. And then you get the "tesla" (no flame, so disappointing) and then it goes slow. You cannot go to a 3 snowflakes zone and get back without freezing to death, so…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Uses generative AI, gameplay could be fun if not for the AI usage :/ i do not recomend supporting this project if they coudnt even get an artist, especially after a few sales
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Once you get the tesla gun your first gun is worthless other then heating up a furance or two later on in the game. pretty much once you get your tesla gun your restarting the game over. unfortunately Devs have not thought about doing a Mix between snow/ice 5 to 6 hours of a story mode.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was enjoing myself until I got the Tesla gun. It is complete ass. Slow and uses up way to much fuel. Still feels the same after maxing it out. Devs made it this way to pad out the play time so you weren't done in four hours. You can do better with your money.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is well made. It is short but doesn't overstay its welcome. I spent 7 hours fully clearing all snow, ice, and dirt from all the tunnels because I found it very satisfying. There wasn't the issue that some games have where you leave a spec behind floating in air to get caught on later. The map was a lot larger than I expected. I liked the specific animations for every tool upgrade and the stove upgrade. They were a nice touch. I did feel a touch disappointed however that the final tool…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Honestly I think this is a gem in the rough, potential wise. The areas feel more magical, which is something that appeals to me. The melting idea, vs digging, using the same kind of template, is a cool idea. The reason why I don't recommend this game as is: the ice cubes you find. So...the ice cubes are artifacts you find, and at the start are like "ooh new weapon or advancement to your stuff. Cool!" Then you realize they are just things that go on pedestals or sit in the main room. Do they do…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game lacks content. the game is missing content. You melt snow, collect scrap, sell scrap at a fixed price. At the same time, you try not to freeze to death. With the money received, you can improve your flamethrower, etc. You get another "weapon" and the same goes on. Sometimes you find artifacts. And that's about it. The world is not procedurally generated and the game has no map, so you will definitely get lost at some point.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is okay, but couldnt finish it due the absurd amount of crossroads and no guide whatsoever. It has a lot of flaws. In some places it testing your patience with long walks to checkpoint, constant inventory overload while you still have a lot of fuel an etc. Ice cubes when you pick em up blocks like 80% of your vision whichh makes delivering them a pain. UI is sloppy and could really use a rework. Thats not all, but i would recommend the game. Still had a fun time dissociating playing it
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I think my favorite genre of game is “zone out and complete tasks,” as in Power Wash Sim, Crime Scene Cleaner Sim, this new one about melting ice MELTOPIA. It’s just scratching this very incremental brain goals I like.
positive · AI labelView post →Very neat game, progression is nice, differents paths are cool, enjoyed a lot. Will continue exploring. Recommended.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Chill concept, but needs serious improvements. It suddenly becomes tedious around 3rd minecart.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Here are some things I liked and disliked from the game: Things I liked: The game is fun the first hours, you have a lot of areas to explore and loot and the progress feels good. You melt snow untill your inventory gets full, go back, sell the loot and start again. At the beggining of the game the the upgrade prizes are well balanced. I didn't feel like I needed to grind too much. Also, the areas are well connected and you get fast travel and a grappling hook really soon in the game, so…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is not really a game and more of a dig a hole style system where you upgrade and upgrade until you reach a spot of overpowered weapons then everything is too easy and it all looks the same with a different type of ice shade. I don't think this is an excellent game but it's fine for it's price. Especially when a lot of the assets look to be a bunch of steampunk assets stuck together.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Meltopia is wrapped up after 8.5ish hours. It starts chill, the chill falls off at the last third of the game, when you are just searching everywhere for relics and driving yourself insane. It also has issues with you freezing to death, making your gear stop working, requiring a save and reload.
neutral · AI labelView post →It was fun and relaxing until I get the second gun or get to any place with the blue ice. The tutorial window pops up and there is no way to exit the window so the game comes to a halt. Unable to progress till this is fixed.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Its honestly an "Alright" game. The concept is good. Fun at first even. But its quiet, theres nothing past melting and collecting 6 artifacts and a skeleton. And they even sell you extra areas via dlc. Theres no ending, just a 6 hour waste of time.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What can I say... probably the same as the others. It's a relatively short, simple indie game about melting the snow to get tons of junk from it, sell the junk, upgrade your gear and keep melting the snow again. It has some minor flaws here and there, but overall - its a nice little adventure, for its price - a robbery, really. Good one.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A simple "digging" game, even the tutorials don't really explain much and you have to figure it out. The gameplay loop is melt the snow, auto pick up loot that you sell to upgrade your stuff. This is true for the first half the game where it then changes into melting snow in the hopes of finding the next artifact to help you beat the game. I found at this point is the closest I got to freezing to death but the only time I froze was for unlocking every achievement in the game. I feel like there…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Nice and chill first person incremental game.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Terribly unbalanced game! This is not a causal game - It is a frantic, frustrating, tedious back and forth with a very disappointing payoff. It felt like an unsatisfying waste of time.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The recent announcement that the developers of this game will be releasing a second game solely to implement multiplayer, after stating in this game that expeditions would be used in multiplayer here, is a severe blow to my confidence about the developers being honest and transparent. In addition to other issues, such as inconsistent fuel use for weapons, the high difficulty curve in upgrading the tesla gun, and the addition of an end-game shovel only used perhaps three times in the main story…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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