I’ve had my eye on Slime Rancher for some slime now. Er, I mean time. Honestly, I will try my hardest to keep the number of puns in this post to a minimum, but there’s no guarantee. I just can’t help myself. Right, I first saw it being played on one of Giant Bomb‘s Unprofessional Fridays many moons ago and thought it looked ultra cute and fun, but knowing that it was in Early Access at the time kept me from actually digging into it. With so many games in my collection that are finished and still unplayed, I prefer to wait for the completed project–well, as completed as anything can be in this digital age of ours with patches and updates and game-changing DLC–before consuming.
Okay, let’s get to it because the sun is rising, the roostros are making noise, and those rock slimes won’t feed themselves. In Slime Rancher, you play as Beatrix LeBeau who has moved a thousand light years away from Earth to the “Far, Far Ranch” to make herself rich by farming…slimes. Her main tool in this endeavor is the vacpack, a vacuum-like/jetpack device that can be used to suck up slimes/other items and eject them. On your farm, you can build pens and corrals to hold slimes and other animals, feeding them their favorite food and collecting valuable plorts from their bodies, which you then sell for a profit, so long as the market prices board shows them up for the day. Also, I think the developer recently said they aren’t poop, but they are totally slime poops.
So, here’s the cycle: you head out into the wild, collect some slimes you want to keep at home, and return to build a housing pen for them. Then you must feed them what they like, whether it be a vegetable, fruit, or meat, taking care to not mix too many different slimes together because you could create a tar slime, which has the ability to demolish your ranch swiftly and unapologetically. Collect the plorts, sell the plorts, buy upgrades to your vacpack or access to new areas, and the cycle repeats anew until you hit a wall, which is usually in the form of lack of money or specific plorts or even where to go next (hint: keys unlock doors). You can totally stay close to your farm and earn decent money by rinsing and repeating certain actions, but the pull to go deeper into the unknown is ultra strong.
Exploration is a key element to Slime Rancher‘s loop, with myself discovering just a wee bit more each time I play. Early on, you’ll come across things you can’t solve, such as numerous treasure pods, and other things that are solvable, such as gigantic slimes that won’t budge, but the solution is left to you to figure out. Which is kind of nice, in this day and age of holding hands. The Slimepedia, the in-game guide full of details about slimes, environments, and other issues, is essential for learning how to get the most out of your day and creatures. Still, navigating to and fro is somewhat tedious, though one will get access to teleporters much later in the game, and your limited amount of inventory space leads to tough calls, knowing you can’t take everything back with you. You also have the option to upgrade your health and how much your jetpack can let you soar, which will open up more previously unreachable areas.
Slime Rancher is a peaceful, calming experience at times, but one without clear direction. I know I previously praised that the game doesn’t hold your hand, but that’s different then general steering. Story bits are sprinkled throughout via e-mails and digital notes scattered out in the wild, but they are not very interesting or give you any reason to care about Beatrix, these strange folk sending her messages, or whoever the heck H is supposed to be. And that’s a shame, especially when it comes to Beatrix, because she turns out to be just a vessel for you to move around inside the game and suck up gooey monsters with and not an interesting character whatsoever, which is a big ol’ bummer, as I really dig her hair color and style. Also, when I first started playing, there was no map, which made exploration far away from your home base somewhat tough, but that has since been added in via a free update, with more changes and features still to come.
At this point, I’ve done a number of milestone thingies, but still don’t feel close at all to calling Slime Rancher complete. For instance, I’ve unlocked the science laboratory area, which really expands your options when it comes to choosing where you put slime plorts and crafting materials and how you spend your resources. Basically, you can purchase item blueprints for machinery or cosmetic dressings for your farm, and then collect the required materials needed for each item to construct it. This is also where you gain access to teleporters. So, the decisions now come down to whether I want money or fun gizmos that can get me rarer ingredients, which is always a tough call. Personally, I just want to fill my farm with tabby slimes and have them bounce around and bomp me on nose repeatedly. I’ve also opened some cryptically locked doors…but to what end, I know not.
I’d write more, but all of my quantum slimes just teleported out of their corral and are quickly making their way to my massive collection of stony hens, eyes wide and hungry. Gotta go!
Grinding Down 