Every crafting skill is important, and if one is missing it can break an entire town. Farms are vital, but without weavers people would be farming naked and nobody wants to see that. People can cut trees on their own time, but having access to a lumber mill to process them into something more useful than logs is needed too. And of course the blacksmith provides tools to all the trades, turning metal from a neat rock into something useful. It’s not that any one trade is more important than the other, but that they’re all interdependent to make life function for everyone. The land of Ellian, however, is without a blacksmith ever since their last one went missing, so it’s probably for the best that a fresh-faced anvil jockey is ready to take up the hammer to prove he’s got the skills to be the best.
While the Iron’s Hot is a crafting adventure setting you in the shoes of an adventurous blacksmith starting out in a new land, looking to prove he can hammer out the best tools, equipment and an endless array of the other items its inhabitants need. Granted, arriving by shipwreck isn’t the most comfortable way to show up, but “not drowned” will do seeing as the former blacksmith’s shop still has all its equipment set up for him to use. With a new home at the old dilapidated base, the blacksmith (who I named Bomp) starts to settle into his new job, taking requests from the nearby towns while earning the respect of Ellian’s guilds.
The basic gameplay of While the Iron’s Hot is exploration and crafting, without a bit of combat to be seen. Heroes can beat up on monsters all day long, but Bomp’s job would be to keep them supplied, not that Ellian is under siege from any particular threat at the moment. The people in the various towns post their needs to a job board that you can pick up for extra cash, and there’s always a larger task or two leading to the next plot point. Money isn’t all that important for the moment-to-moment gameplay, and for the most part it’s just a number that gets bigger until you’ve got enough to afford upgrading home base from a rundown dump into a thriving little town of its own.
As a blacksmith, a large amount of Bomp’s time will be spent in the workshop, hammering out new equipment at four separate stations with their own minigames. The forge is where you toss ore to turn it into ingots, and while it will do this automatically, there’s also a bellows you may use to double the output if you’ve got the timing right to trigger a continually-moving line as it crosses the green zone. The anvil is where you beat ingots into basic shapes, with the cursor moving automatically back and forth across a four-by-four grid and a smack of the hammer knocking away any squares that aren’t part of the target shape. If it needs further refining, the grindstone is for sharpening the edges, following the randomized up/down/left/right prompts until the chunk of metal holds a blade, and then over at the assembly table all the bits can be placed in specific order on a three-by-three grid to create the final product.
Not all items are made fully from metal, but resources are plentiful when exploring the world. You’ll need to carry tools of your own to harvest them, of course, but harvesting trees lets you make wooden handles, the desert has sand and other materials for forging glass (which, in a process that pushes even the loose standards of video game logic, you beat into shape on the anvil using a hammer same as any other material), and later items are several different sub-items combined together. You need to construct a wheel to make a propeller to create a couple of more advanced items, for example, but the game builds up slowly to this, so by the time you’re three items deep into crafting a submarine where the components require different types of ore, it all seems reasonable.
All this crafting is in service to the adventure part of While the Iron’s Hot, which is driven along by fun writing and decent exploration areas. One section, for example, has you sailing from island to island to find red bananas for a giant gorilla or chasing down clues to buried treasure. There are also side-story sections that can have different choices to complete, like in the very beginning of the game choosing to read a diary or not, or figuring out who to give a crafted item to midway through the game. Sometimes the rewards are useful materials, and sometimes it’s different clothing items you can use to dress up the adorable cow that pulls your portable forge around. Most of the quests are straightforward, though, in terms of being the go-here-do-this type, but some of the caves and buildings have more puzzle-y exploratory areas.
All the running around parts are done in a side-view style, whether in a cave, tower or town. Puzzles in caves tend to be of the type where you need to hit switches in the right order to make all the platforms line up, or find the code to unlock a door, not overly complicated, but making a nice change of pace overall. There’s not much to explore in towns, though, with most of them being laid out left to right while you run to the job board, local vendor or track down a villager to deliver a completed job. It’s not fancy, but gets the job done, letting you get straight back to crafting or exploring depending on whichever you feel like doing at the moment.
Closing Comments:
What makes While the Iron’s Hot work is a combination of a pleasant series of tasks and quirky, entertaining characters in every new town and point of interest. Nothing is particularly difficult, from crafting to puzzles, but it’s nice to visit Ellian and wander around, picking up jobs or helping people while beating metal into shape. Even after the main plot is through there’s post-game content to play, completing the upgrade of buildings in the home town and taking on new quests while wrapping up any unfinished ones, all of which are documented in the journal. There can be a lot to keep track of, but features like being able to pin a recipe or view the character list help when you need a reminder, and the whole game feels designed to make becoming a master blacksmith as accessible as possible. While not particularly deep, While the Iron is Hot succeeds on charm and pure likeability, and it’s almost impossible to resist enjoying the blacksmithing journey through its world.
