Hey everyone, I’m Chris, game designer at Monomi Park. I’m going to share a glimpse into the process of world building for Slime Rancher. Please note that this just a lightweight overview on world design and it will also include images of in-progress content that is highly subject to change.
For ease of discussion, I’m simplifying the process into three phases: direction, layout, and polish.
Before I start building out a new area, Nick and I often discuss what purpose the space should serve. Does the space primarily serve as a playground for many slimes? Is it a traversal space for the player to get between two areas of heavy content? Is it a hidden space for a treasure pod or other reward?
Once we determine what the purpose of the space should be, I start to think in the broadest strokes possible within the established framework. What is the area’s central conceit? What makes it unique but still a part of the larger world as a whole? What can be added to sell the theme of this space? This part of the process can involve sketches, quickly blocking out how assets can be used, and thinking about set pieces. Decisions in this phase always inform later phases, even if the specific implementations change during layout and playtesting.
A quick designer sketch of the large set piece on “Ring Island” in the Dry Reef
When developing entirely new spaces, there’s often a lot of back and forth discussions during this phase between Nick, Ian, and myself and those ideas build upon each other over time. For example, when developing the new Ruins zone I found a few pieces of concept art online that hinted at visual themes that I thought were interesting. I then quickly blocked out a vignette with white box and existing assets that helped early discussions of the zone’s style. A lot of exploration in this phase is temporary at best, but it is still an invaluable part of deciding what we wanted as a team.
Experimenting with early visual themes and styles for the Ruins in small vignettes
Ian then took those visuals and applied his own ideas about how to unify and use them in a concept art piece.
Ian’s concept art based on the ruin vignettes with notes on art direction
That piece then helped inform me of the types of set pieces I wanted to capture in the slightly more detailed whitebox pass.
Starting to integrate Ian’s art direction into white boxed Ruins areas
What purpose does this area serve? - gameplay, hidden area, transition?
What interesting concept is central to this area’s theme? - ring island, marsh, sea bridges?
Utilizing sketches, hero props, set pieces, identifying central conceits
When it comes time to start building the space, I first block out how the critical and alternate paths take the player through the area and think about where the majority of the action is likely to take place. Each area is usually a combination of open space and visual funnels that lead to new areas.
‘Ring Island’ during various stages of development
I then add some representative spawners to add slimes and resources to the mix. At this stage nothing is balanced, but it helps to see how the slimes will behave in the space and where they tend to naturally congregate.
After playing the rough layout for a bit I try and figure out if traversal through the area feels intuitive and if the space accomplishes goals set in the Direction phase. Afterwards, I go back through and do a little bit of “pre-polish” to further define specific parts of the space.
In the above example with Ring Island I started with the concept of a beach with a land-locked “tidepool” in the middle as its set piece. As the beach developed, coral and grass were added to frame the sandy path leading further into the island. These patches of flora also served to anchor where slimes and resources spawned from. Color was also a consideration in aiding flow of the space. Sand and warm colored coral and grass were used to lead the eye down the beach path, while water and cool/wet colored seaweed and moss lead through the alternative tidepool cave.
Main navigation and playable space. Which space for slimes, which for traversal?
Props to further define areas, anchor resources and slime spawns
Representative resource and slime placement
In many art books, I’ve always jokingly referred to this phase as the “just add detail” step in the process. Of course it’s never that simple, but at least during the first part of this phase I get to go back through each area and really double down on “art-ing” the space up. Decorative elements, such as most of the flora and rocks, and additional navigation guides are added to reinforce areas of interest. Audio and visual effects such as gusts of wind or fog are added to strengthen the atmosphere.
As more flora was added to to the marshy area of the Moss Blanket, glowing navigational guides were added to help guide the player. This was even more important for traversing at night.
Many areas are actually much more straightforward than they appear, but become much harder to navigate with all the extra environmental decoration.
Props really transform early block outs of areas
Although that’s the more lighthearted fun part, a much larger part of the polish phase is balancing, playtesting, and optimizing. I go back through and see all the parts working (or not working) as a whole and iterate, iterate, iterate.
Decorative elements for aesthetics and additional navigation guides
Balancing, playtesting, optimizing, iteration
That’s all for this post, thanks for reading!
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