About Meltpour
Crucibles of molten metal on a foundry bench, and a docket above them naming the moulds you have to fill. Lift the metal off the top of one crucible and pour it into another — and here nothing is ever refused. Pour copper onto tin and it does not bounce off, it fuses into bronze, and no pour will ever separate them again. That is the whole game: half the alloys on the docket only exist if you make them, and the order you make them in is the puzzle, because a pour that would have been fine four moves ago is the one that strands you. Every crucible you can pour into says what it would make before you tap it, a pour that would waste the metal for good is marked in red and asks twice, and if a bench is ever spoiled past saving the rewind back to a bench that still works is free, uncapped and never behind a video.
How to play
- Read the docket above the bench: it lists the moulds to fill, such as two Bronze and one Copper.
- Tap a crucible to lift its top run of metal, then tap another crucible to pour it in.
- Pouring onto an empty crucible or the same alloy changes nothing. Pouring onto a different alloy fuses both into a new one, permanently.
- Before you pour, each crucible shows a badge naming what the pour would make.
- The level is finished when every crucible is either empty or full of one alloy, and the full ones match the docket exactly.
Tips
- Read the stamps, not the colours. Copper is a disc, tin a bar, zinc a wedge. An alloy's stamp shows every metal inside it, so Pewter is a bar and a wedge. Fusing only ever adds marks, never removes them.
- Over-fusing fails too. Mixing everything together makes crucibles pure but not the right alloys. If the docket wants plain Copper, keep enough raw copper away from tin and zinc until that mould is full.
- Treat crimson as a proof. A dashed crimson ring with a SCRAP badge means that pour makes the order impossible. It needs a second tap to go through. If you did it by mistake, the free rewind goes back to the pour that caused it.
- Guard the spare crucible. An empty crucible is the only place any metal can wait without meeting another alloy. From level 9, some benches have only one spare, so do not fill it with a run you cannot move again.
Read the full Meltpour guide (5 min read)
From the developer
Meltpour is a sorting puzzle I built on 10 September to test whether one change of rule makes a different game. In Prism Sort an illegal pour is refused. Here nothing is refused: pour copper onto tin and it fuses into bronze, permanently, and no move undoes it. It is plain JavaScript on one canvas.
I model alloys as sets of base metals, so fusing is just combining sets. That makes the permanence part of the rules rather than bookkeeping, and turns the question of whether a bench can still be finished into cheap exact arithmetic.
A destructive rule needs care. Every board is built backwards from the finished order, so a solution always exists. Before you tap, any pour that would leave the board unfinishable is painted crimson and asks twice. The way back is free: undo, restart, and a rewind to the last bench that can still be filled, which steps back to exactly the pour that did the damage. I did not want a game that wrecks your board and then sells you the undo, so the paid assists are only for being stuck. The interface art is from Hyper Casual UI Pack by Smashy Tech, and the crucible, coal and fire pit are rendered from Low Poly Atmospheric Locations Pack by Palmov Island.
Son Hoang, who made Meltpour
Update history
- Added looping music from Vasco Grossmann's Fantasy Music Lite.
- Removed the 'Watch a video' buttons, which could never pay out here; the free rescue and the ingot prices are unchanged.
- New buttons, panels, and crucible, coal and fire pit art, and results now award up to three stars.
- Real loading bar, and every screen fits phones, tablets and desktops without scrolling.
- Text now scales with the screen; on a laptop the smallest labels had been 8 pixels.
- First version: pour molten metals between crucibles to fill orders, where mixing two metals fuses them into an alloy for good.
Questions
Does Meltpour save my progress?
Yes, in your browser's local storage. It keeps your level, ingot balance, fewest pours per level, sound and stamp settings, and the bench in progress with its history, so closing the tab mid-level brings you back to the same pour.
What happens if I ruin a bench?
The assist panel opens by itself and offers a free rewind. It steps back one pour at a time until the order can be filled again. It costs no ingots, has no limit and does not count as an assist.
What do ingots buy?
Help only. You start with 60. A hint showing the next good pour costs 25, a quench that rolls back a crucible's last fusion costs 35, and one extra crucible for the level costs 40.
Can I play it on a phone?
Yes. Tap a crucible, then tap where it pours, with on-screen Undo, Restart and Stuck? buttons. On a computer you can also use keys 1–9 to pick crucibles, Z to undo and R to restart.
