A game about farming slime? Really?
Yup. Keep with me, it’s really not that bad.
Slime Rancher, by Monomi Park, came out in Early Access in 2016 and went through full release in 2017. Since then it has received many additions to content – both paid and free.
You play as Beatrix LeBeau, a woman who has bought a run-down ranch in the middle of a place called The Far, Far Range. Your goal is to collect varieties of slimes, home and feed them, and exchange their poop plorts for money.
I have no idea who’s buying that stuff, either, and I don’t really want to know.
There are a fair few slime varieties in the game that you can collect and corral. And you will want to keep them in their pens – free range slimes sound like a great idea but it turns out the be problematic.
Anyway! Step one to Slime Ranching is acqusition of slime. But I imagine they’re pretty slippery and quite hard to carry around, so how do we pick them up?
In a vacuum, obviously!
No… No, really. We’re vacuuming them up. In fact, we vacuum everything up! Slimes? Vacuum. Water? Vacuum. Carrots? Vacuum. Who needs a bag? This is the future.
Now you have your slimes, where do you keep them? Step two is housing. Using your Newbucks, you’ll want to build a little pen for your new colourful buddies. Your slimes will stay in here (if you’re lucky) and wait to be fed their favourite goodies. Corrals can be upgraded with roofing, music, feeders, plort collectors, and more – remember to upgrade them.
Which brings us to step three: food.
Some slimes eat everything – like the pink slimes – whereas others have a set diet. Tabby slimes, for example, are cute little carnivores like real-life cats. But regardless of dietary restrictions, they each have their favourite food. Feed the slime, get plorts in return.
Time for profit! Take your poop crystals to the plort exchange for some sweet Newbucks, but don’t take too many of a single type. Welcome to the cutest economics lesson ever, I hope you’re prepared to learn about supply and demand.
But you can do more with your plorts than sell them. Sometimes they’re needed for trades between you and other ranches. Or you could feed them to a different slime species to create a hybrid.
Yup. Feed a plort from one species to another. That’s genuinely an encouraged mechanic in this game.
Anyway, that’s how you get hybrid slimes, called largos because… well, because they’re larger than the regular slime. Largos eat whatever the ‘parent’ slimes eat, and produce both types of plort. But don’t get cocky and mix more than two varieties of slime together. You end up with a big ball of hatred and hunger known as Tarr – they’ll eat your slimes, your crops, and try to eat you.
Remember when I said free range slimes weren’t as fun as they sounded?
Slime Rancher doesn’t really have a storyline per se, but it does have messages that you can find as you explore The Far, Far Range. You can discover notes addressed to you by the previous rancher, Hobson Twillgers who suddenly disappeated, and receive letters from your Earth-based friend, Casey.
While the hidden holographic notes and the Starmail adds some level of story, it’s obvious that Slime Rancher is more about exploration. I’d say that the vast and varied areas within the world are more enticing than actually ranching and managing your slimey empire.
If you’re looking for a relaxing game with simple mechanics, Slime Rancher is a good option in bright and bold packaging. It keeps you entertained without frustrating you, and it’s accessible to gamers of all ages and skillsets.
But if you’re after something a bit more in depth, with more of a management or farming focus, you may want to look elsewhere. Maybe Stardew Valley?
Either way, I think that Slime Rancher is a great debut release from Monomi Park! It’s full of personality and light. As directionless as it may seem at times, I find myself wandering back through to the Ranch to chill out with my blob-buddies.
Home on The Range
If you want to join in the fun, you can! Slime Rancher is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One – so hopefully you don’t miss out! Below are links to Amazon (for console) and Humble Bundle (for PC). Using this Humble link means that I get a little bit of ‘thank you’ money from Humble Bundle, but you don’t pay any extra for the game.
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