Melter is a game about having a Bad Experience in a Dublin Pub.
Experience having a nightmare of an identity crisis surrounded by the worst people you could imagine.
You’ve just come into being amongst a haze of synthetic smoke.
You have no memory of who you are beyond a head controlling a body.
You’re terrified.
The world feels like a simulation, a façade, like a video game that’s breaking at the seams.
You want to lie down and cry yourself to sleep but the floor is sticky with stale beer and piss.
You gather the reasoning that you need to find out who you are, to find out where you live, to find your bed, to hide away from the pulsating hostility of the world and hope that this ordeal will subside. This is your Main Quest.
Features
Talk to the weeknight drinkers and try to glean clues about yourself. Melter features 29 NPCs, each one a “head melter” with their own hot takes and pint-fuelled philosophies. They may be a mirror to who you are or who you hope you will never be.
Explore McGee’s Pub throughout the night as new areas open and bands take the stage.
Forge your way through the branching narrative and participate in multiple “Freak Outs” as you try piece your self-awareness back together.
Discover if it’s possible to really make an impression on the world around you, or accept that there’s no changing the programming of The Simulation we call “Life”.
You can also jump. There’s little reason why you’d need to, but it’s a video game, and I believe there should always be a jump button.
Music
Your nightmare is underscored by the music of cult Irish band, The Deadlians, as well as their seasonal side projects, Spacers, Fools and Pumpkins. If you’ve not heard them before, check out their Bandcamp. They may also be coming to a town near you, depending on how close your town is to Dublin.
And if you do catch a show, make sure to chat to their Merch Guy, he may be the Solo Game Dev behind Melter - Bad Experience.
By Scrag Games
Scrag Games is run by me, MerkB. I’m a SoloDev from Dublin. I’ve been bouncing between Ireland and the back-arse of Sweden during production.
My goal with Scrag Games is to tell stories that can only be told through video games. Like exploring when real life feels like a game, and when games feel like real life. It sounds pretty highfalutin which is why I prefer the term “Lad Jank”.
Melter - Bad Experience is a personal story about depersonalisation. I’ve been making it for over a year and living it for over two decades. I really hope you enjoy it. I won’t say it’s a “light hearted romp” but I think it’s pretty funny. And if nothing else, it’s a wild swing at something different.
Thanks for making it this far,
Love Merk.
