Genre: Business Management? Action Adventure? First Person Strategy? First Person Shooter? You know what, lets just go with Slime Ranching Simulator.
Developer: Monomi Park
Price: £14.99 (or get it via the devs’ Humble Widget for £13.99)
So I’ve been down on the ranch all day, running around and tending to my slimes. I’ve got all sorts of slimes! I’ve got Phospor Tabby Largos, Puddle Slimes, Honey Boom Largos, Phospor Rock Largos, Tabby Slimes... Oh, and one of my Tabby slimes somehow got out and into the chickens and... hold on, you’ve got no idea what I’m going on about have you?
Okay, the easiest way I can explain this is to give you a quick mythozoology lesson. Slime Rancher is an Early Access game where you’re in charge of a farm that deals in the byproducts of an alien lifeform known as Slimes. Slimes are happy bouncy creatures that can be found in the wilderness all around your ranch. Whilst their personalities depend on their species they mostly do three things; bounce around, eat things and poop out a crystaline substance known as plort. The plort from various different species of slime has real world uses in the fields of science and manufacturing (and in some cases, food. Ew.), and so is a hotly traded commodity, with plort market prices constantly fluctuating.
No matter how omniverous the breed of slime, they won’t eat their own plort. They will, however, eat the plort of other types of slime, which is where things get weird. Well, weirder at any rate. When a slime of one variety consumes a plort from a slime of another variety it transforms into a big hybrid slime called a Largo, combining characteristics from both the host slime and the plort. These Largos are bigger than their counterparts (too big to fit into a vacuum pack), and will produce two plorts each time they eat, making them cheaper to farm than the normal sized slimes.
Farming Largos is not without its risks, however; should a Largo happen to consume a plort from a third type of slime they will mutate into a Tarr, a oil-slick rainbow coloured mass of opaque monstrosity that will consume anything and anyone it comes into contact with. This includes ranchers. These creatures produce nothing but more Tarr and so will need to be put down quickly, either by incineration, or through judicious application of water. A Tarr in the wild is a not uncommon occurrence that can be easily handled or fled, but a Tarr on the ranch can quickly turn into an infestation that can wipe out a large amount of your current livestock.
So naturally it’s important when building your slime ranch that you try and avoid being caught out by such eventualities. Luckily, whilst the initial pens aren’t up to much, they’re designed to be modular and upgradable; you can fit out your little force-field cubicles with higher walls, a lid and tools that automate feeding and plort collection, and you can alter environmental factors currently including playing music to your slimes, or protecting them from harsh sunlight. Still, you may still need to consider the possibility of escapes and the unintended consequences that can unfold. On that basis, perhaps it would be best not to keep the Exploding Cat Slimes next to the Honey slime pen. Just a thought.
You also need to keep a tabs on keeping your slimes well fed; aside from the fact that feeding slimes is what gets you your hard-earned plort, hungry slimes are misbehaving slimes, and will climb into big stacks in an effort to escape their confines. You also don’t want to let them get hungry because... actually I don’t know what happens if they get too hungry; I just can’t stand the looks on their faces when they do. It’s therefore important that a rancher come up with a food supply for each of their slimes, whether it be through gardening or raising chickens. There’s a variety of fruits, veggies and poultry that can be used to fill these
So how do you get your slimes, plants and chickens? Well that involves going out into the world with a vacuum cleaner strapped on your back and sucking up the stuff you need from out in the wild. By default the Vacpack can carry twenty of each of four different types of item at a time, but this limit can be increased with upgrades purchasable back at the ramp, along with some upgrades to the player’s health, stamina and speed. In many ways it’s yet another retread of the tried and tested loot, sell, upgrade formula, but it’s one that’s got plenty of variety and a great amount of style to it. And let us face it, if the looting, selling and upgrading gameplay loop ceased to exist tomorrow, most games with any kind of depth would just cease to be.
Quite frankly I am more excited for Slime Rancher than I have been for a commercially available alpha of a game since Minecraft. Much like with the latter there’s already a solid game implemented in the core of the experience and it’s very clear exactly how and where expansion will flow. I look forward to an expanding world, a larger variety of slimes and, (and I may have to suggest this to the designer) cat toys to keep the Tabby Slimes occupied. Slime Rancher is one of those rare games that feels utterly brilliant despite being very visibly a work-in-progress.
How long did I play? - 6.9 hours
Did I finish it? - N/A, although I saw most of the current content.
Would I play it again? - Yes. Definitely. I need to set up a Google alert for this game’s patch notes.
