Farming games are always a great way to unwind and relax in my opinion. Especial if these games have some story elements you can focus on when you get tired of collecting and replanting resources. Slime Rancher recently came out of early access and has absorbed a good amount of my time.

In Slime Rancher, you play as a young rancher named Beutrix LeBeau who has travel a thousand lightyears from Earth to see if she can make it as a slime rancher. Slime Ranchers are people who have decided to wrangle up creatures called slimes that have different appearances and produce different kind of plorts, the main export you will need to focus on. To get plorts you feed slimes within their diet and they will produce a plort. Plorts will have different prices based on rarity alone, but the prices will raise and lower based on demand. The Plort Market, where you send the plorts you want to collect money on, will lower the price on plorts that are constantly being sent out and raises the price on plorts that are not that common, so make sure you watch the prices before you cash in.

Slime Rancher has two different game modes: Adventure and 5 Day Rush. 5 Day Rush is pretty self-explanatory. You have 5 in game days to wrangle up slimes, feed them, collect their plorts and cash in. In this mode, the market prices do not raise or lower which allows you to just focus on higher priced plorts. Adventure mode allows you to explore the large map that you are placed in. While exploring, you will discover new slimes and resources needed to be the best. There are a few things to keep in mind as you are wrangling and producing plorts. Slime have different diets and features you need to focus on. Diets break into 3 main categories; Fruit, Veggie and Meat and two special slimes were one only eats water and the other ash. There are various fruits and veggies that you can find and use gardens to grow at your base. The main source of meat is hens and roosters, but there are various hens you can find across the map. On top of diets, slime have unique features that need to be taken in mind when you are adding them to your ranch. For example, there is a type of slime that can only live in water and another that if it gets too hungry, will use its vines to take food and plorts from other places which may cause issues.

There is a lot of options when it comes to raising slimes. One major feature of slimes is they can get the plorts of other slimes to became a fusion largo, or large slime. So, if a pink slime eats a rock plort it will become a Pink Rock Largo, which will produce both pink and rock plorts. This is nice so you can save space and may be limited the type of food you need to keep in stock. In my game, I fused most my slimes with pink plorts so their diet is everything so I use whatever I have in stock. This is one thing to keep in mind is slimes can only have 2 types. If a Largo slime eats a 3 type of plort, it will become a Tarr. Tarr are basically evil slimes that will eat other slimes, but you can get rid of them by throwing them off cliffs or shooting water at them. There is a ‘end game’ element to Slime Rancher which is discovered by exploring.

Exploring the map will require money, plorts and slime keys. There are 4 main areas that you can purchase to expand you ranch and gain access to new areas. The areas include: A forest area that will a great source of fruit, veggies and chickens; The docks, which is by the forest, that has a water fall; the caverns which help with the slime that are nocturnal; and the science area, where you can use plorts and other resources to create gadgets that will with moving around the map, moving plorts and other features. These areas also have extra plots of land to place corrals, gardens, and other needed areas. Other areas will behind the door that requires a slime key. Slime keys are given by Gordo Slime, giant slimes that require a large amount of fruit, veggie or meat to be full and once full will explode and reward the player with those type of slimes, crates with resources in it, and sometimes a slime key. To reach the final areas require plorts. There are statues of slimes that have a plort shaped slot and if you place the according plorts in the correct statues a door will open or a portal will be unlocked. Between exploring and wrangling up slimes, there is potential to lose a lot of time to this game.

The pacing of Slime Rancher depends solely on the player. Since I played this game during it’s early access phase, when I started a new game, I was already pretty familiar with the basics of the game. I got to the final location and saw the credits after 28 in game days. There also quite a bit of little things here and there that add some charm to the game. While exploring you can find will notes from an explorer that will give you info about the areas in the game. You will get emails from Casey, Beutrix’s lover, various people that will ask for certain resources and a company that will help customize your house. Also, the song during the credits is awesome and deserves a listen.

Hopefully I did this game justice cause it’s a fun game. If you are interested in Slime Rancher you can check it out here.

Thank you so much for reading this. If you like this article hopefully you will read some of the other pieces on the site.

Until next time, have fun and keep gaming.

-Mike Rambulla